Season Guide - Hungary - Hilton Racing

But then that’s what you get with a city divided down the middle. A scion of the distinguished Hapsburg dynasty, also an MEP, was once asked by a colleague if he’d caught the result of the Austria-Hungary game the previous evening. “No I didn’t,” he replied. “Who were we playing?”

Standing on the picturesque ramparts of Buda, looking down the hill and across the stately Duna – as Hungarians called the Danube - towards the boulevards of Pest, this perfectly formed retort has a glorious resonance.

Budapest is a split metropolis. Where the two halves of other cities retain a molten unity, the Hungarian capital is two separate towns fastened together by bridges. It’s fitting the main crossing, a sturdy construction of twin arches, is known as the Chain Bridge.

Buda towers over the Pest like Goliath over David, its elevations crowned with the castle and the white walls of the Fisherman’s Bastion,. These, and the Liberty statue erected in 1947 to celebrate the defeat of Nazism, are the city’s most obvious and panoramic tourist attractions. Behind them, residential suburbs undulate over receding hills; the smarter ones have the feel of hilltop villages.

Up here in the Castle District is a most appetising and intimate bar, especially in the colder months. Ruszwurm (near Szentharomsag ter, I. district) is something of an institution among locals and the perfect pitstop for a cup of coffee and a sticky cake.

Meanwhile, down on the east bank, the more epic dimensions of Pest fan out along strictly regimented avenues, the very model of a confident late-nineteenth townscape built in the image of imperial Vienna. Here’s where you get your shopping done, principally along the pedestrian thoroughfare of Vaci utca, where purveyors of porcelain, embroideries and folk art compete for your attention.