Budapest is a city of two million people that straddles the Danube. It combines monumental style with a very particular kind of local energy and pride. Visitors go to Budapest in search of grand buildings and a feast of Habsburg history. But, once there, newcomers are invariably seduced by the city’s punchy appeal. Budapest has enough to detain you for a week, a month or even a lifetime.

The Castle District (Várnegyed) pulls the crowds, but make time too for the Buda Hills, the Balváros in Pest, the city's Jewish Quarter, and a trip up the river to the Danube Bend. The big attraction for 2019 is the newly reopened Museum of Fine Art which has just gone through serious renovation (it needed it!). Don't miss the museum's Romanesque Hall, now happily restored to its original splendour.

The Hungarian capital lies at the hub of the country’s excellent rail network. Trains leave one or another of Budapest’s four main stations (Keleti, Déli, Nyugati and Kelenföld) at regular intervals for provincial centres across the country. Some of the stations are attractions in their own right.

Budapest is a bridge between central Europe and the Balkan region. No surprise then that the Hungarian capital enjoys excellent international rail connections. There are a dozen direct trains each day from Vienna, seven from Prague, five from Munich, two from Zurich and one from Hamburg, Berlin and Dresden. There is an impressive range of direct overnight services, with the following cities all featuring on the departure boards: Belgrade, Bucharest, Kiev, Kraków, Warsaw and Zurich.

Travellers from Britain heading for Budapest can travel by day from London via Paris to either Munich or Zurich, connecting in one of those cities onto a direct overnight service to the Hungarian capital.