The story of this place
A royal residence has crowned Buda's Castle Hill since the 13th century, when Béla IV built a fortress after the Mongol invasion. Under King Matthias Corvinus in the 15th century it became a Renaissance court famed across Europe. Then came the falls: the Ottomans seized it in 1541 and held Buda for 145 years; the 1686 siege that expelled them left it in ruins; and in the 1944-45 Siege of Budapest the palace was gutted in some of WWII's fiercest urban fighting as German and Soviet armies fought street by street. Each time it rose again. Today the reconstructed baroque palace houses the Hungarian National Gallery and museum, its ramparts giving the finest view over the Danube and Pest.