Elisabeth Bridge
The sleek cable span you cross today is a 1964 brutalist replacement — the ornate original was blown up at the end of WWII.
Coming soon on iOS — be first to walk Budapest offline.
At only 290 m, this bridge spans the narrowest point of the Danube in the Budapest area. The original 1897–1903 chain bridge was built amid corruption: a city councilman owned the awkward Buda riverbank plot and bribed colleagues to approve it at inflated prices. The resulting sharp turn at the Buda end still carries a 40 km/h speed limit posted after a family was killed there in 2004.
What to look for
- Bronze statue of Elisabeth of Bavaria in a small garden on the Buda side — the empress the bridge is named for, assassinated in 1898, five years before her bridge even opened
- The tight curve immediately past the Buda bridgehead, an engineering compromise forced by 19th-century corruption that has caused fatal accidents into the 21st century
- Inner City Parish Church at the Pest end on March 15 Square — the oldest church in Pest, built in the 13th century
Rudas Baths and Rácz Baths are a short walk from the Buda end at Döbrentei Square; the 13th-century Inner City Parish Church is steps from the Pest end at March 15 Square.
Elisabeth Bridge is one of 37 sights worth the detour in Budapest, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Budapest pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Budapest
- Hungarian Parliament BuildingA political manifesto in stone: Hungary's parliament was built to look like Westminster, on purpose, with 40 kg of gold inside.
- Buda CastleA palace first raised in 1265, severely damaged in the Siege of Budapest during World War II, and rebuilt by a communist government — the scars and the seams are the story.
- Széchenyi Chain BridgeThe bridge that stitched Buda and Pest into one city — designed in Britain, shipped in sections, and opened in 1849 as one of the world's longest spans.
- Heroes' SquareAt the far end of Andrássy Avenue, a monument built in 1896 fixes the Magyar conquest of 896 AD in stone — seven founding chieftains, national leaders, and the plaza where Hungary reburied Imre Nagy in 1989.
- AquincumMarcus Aurelius is believed to have written parts of the Meditations here — on the Roman empire's frontier, not in Rome.
- St. Stephen's BasilicaThe first King of Hungary's mummified right hand sits in a reliquary here — and the dome above you had to be torn down and rebuilt from nothing after it collapsed in 1858.