Budapest Layover Near Margaret Island
Part of the full Budapest Layover: Danube Promenade From BUD
Margaret Island is two and a half kilometres of car-free parkland sitting in the middle of the Danube at Budapest, open at both ends with no barrier and no ticket, and it has a musical fountain at its southern tip and the ruins of a thirteenth-century convent in the middle of it.
The musical fountain at Margaret Island’s southern tip
The pool is 36 metres across, with 154 separately controlled jets and a central spout that goes up 25 metres, and it runs to music through the day and switches to coloured light after dark. It is the first thing you reach coming on at the Margaret Bridge end, and there are benches all round it, which tells you what most people do here.
The island itself was three separate islands until the 1870s, when the gaps were filled in. Private cars have been kept off it for decades; a bus runs the length, and everything else is on foot, on a bike or on the running track. Between spring and autumn the city’s scheduled Danube boats call here too, though the service is seasonal and does not run daily, so check rather than assume. For the narrated version of the same stretch of water, a one-hour daytime sightseeing cruise from the central Pest piers, booked through a tours and activities platform, covers the bridges either side of the island.
The catch with an island this shape is that the sights are spread along its whole length rather than gathered in one place, so anything you bring onto the island gets carried the full two and a half kilometres and back.
The convent ruins where Margaret of Hungary lived
Halfway up the island, low limestone walls mark out a Dominican convent that Béla IV founded in the 1250s, in the years after the Mongol invasion had emptied the country. He had promised, if the kingdom survived, to give his daughter to the church, and Margaret was sent here as a child and stayed. She died in 1270, aged 28, was canonised in 1943, and the island carries her name.
The nuns left in the sixteenth century as the Ottomans advanced, and what is left is foundations, a few standing fragments and a marked grave, laid out with paths through it and open to anyone. A short walk north stands St Michael’s Chapel, a Premonstratensian building put back together in the 1930s out of its own excavated stones. Its bell is the reason to stop: cast in the fifteenth century, it was turned up in 1914 in the roots of a walnut tree a storm had blown over, and it is the oldest bell in Budapest.
The 1911 water tower’s lookout gallery
The white octagonal tower standing over the middle of the island went up in 1911 in reinforced concrete, which was still an adventurous material for a building meant to hold water 57 metres in the air. It has been a protected monument for decades and has doubled as a lookout since 2012, with an exhibition space in the drum and an open-air theatre at its foot.
Going up costs 500 forints for an adult and takes 153 steps, with a limit of thirty people inside at once, so on a summer afternoon there can be a short wait at the bottom. It opens from midday on weekdays and from 10am at weekends. The gallery is not high enough to see the whole city, but it clears the trees, which on an island this flat is the only way to work out how the thing is laid out.
North of the tower the ground stays useful for another kilometre. The Japanese garden at that end has an artificial waterfall, koi and a pond fed with thermal water that keeps it from freezing; the Palatinus pool complex on the western side is a full open-air bath with slides and charges accordingly; and the 5.35-kilometre rubber running loop goes round all of it, flat, with drinking fountains and no traffic. This is the version of a few free hours where nothing needs booking. If you want the opposite, the main Budapest guide does the basilica and the bridges, and there is a hot-water version out at the thermal bath in City Park.
Margaret Island’s only exits are its two bridges
Nothing else connects it to the mainland: Margaret Bridge at the southern tip, Árpád Bridge at the northern one, plus the seasonal boats. Both bridges carry trams and buses that stop on the island, so getting off is quick from either end.
For Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport (BUD), cross to the Pest side and pick up metro line M3, which runs under Nyugati station, two tram stops down the Grand Boulevard from the bridge. From there it is either south-east to Kőbánya-Kispest and bus 200E to the terminal, one 850-forint ticket covering the lot in 50 to 60 minutes, or two stops to Deák Ferenc tér and the 100E airport bus, about 40 minutes but on its own 2,500-forint fare. Allow two and a half hours from the middle of the island, since the first twenty minutes of it are spent walking.
Frequently asked questions
How do you get onto Margaret Island in Budapest?
Across one of the two bridges that touch it, or by boat. Margaret Bridge crosses the southern tip and Árpád Bridge the northern one, and both carry trams and buses with stops on the island itself; from the middle of Pest the southern end is a short tram ride up the ring road. Between spring and autumn the city also runs scheduled boats on the Danube that call at the island, but the service is seasonal and does not run every day, so check before relying on it. There is no barrier, no ticket and no closing time.
How long does it take to walk the length of Margaret Island?
About thirty-five minutes end to end at an ordinary pace, and a little over an hour if you walk back. The island runs two and a half kilometres from Margaret Bridge in the south to Árpád Bridge in the north and is around half a kilometre across at its widest, with the fountain, the convent ruins, the water tower and the Japanese garden spread along that length rather than clustered. A bus runs the length of it if you would rather not.
Is Margaret Island a good place to run?
This is where Budapest runs. A rubber-surfaced track runs 5.35 kilometres round the perimeter, flat the whole way, with distance markers, drinking fountains and no traffic crossing it at any point, because private cars are not allowed on the island. It gets busy at either end of the day and is close to empty in the middle of the afternoon. The Palatinus open-air pool complex halfway up the island is the place to wash afterwards, and it charges.
What is there to do on Margaret Island when it rains?
Not much, and that is the honest answer: this is an outdoor stop with almost no roof on it. The water tower has an exhibition space inside and 153 steps up to a covered gallery, which is fifteen minutes of shelter rather than an afternoon. Otherwise the convent ruins and the fountain are open ground, the trees are the only cover on the running loop, and a wet day is better spent on the Pest side of Margaret Bridge than out here.