There is a fee to reach the lookout from the top level of the bastion, but the lower levels are free and the view is just as beautiful
Fisherman’s Bastion is located just behind Matthias Church in the Castle District of Buda. A very, very long stairway, adorned with reliefs of coats-of-arms, links the bastion to the streets below — scale it if you dare. Built in a combination of neo-Gothic and neo-Romanesque styles, with a twist of fantasy, the turrets and parapets look like something from a fairytale. In fact, the whole bastion looks rather like the Disney logo.
The bastion was built as a viewing platform in 1905 by Frigyes Schulek, the same architect who helped restore Matthias Church to its former splendour after centuries of decay, and it offers one of the best views in Budapest — a city that is not lacking in magnificent panoramas. Perhaps only the views from Gellért Hill and Buda Castle can challenge it.
From the bastion there is a spectacular view of the Danube river and Pest on the other side. You can clearly see some of Budapest’s iconic landmarks, such as St Stephen’s Basilica and the Parliament, the two tallest buildings in Budapest, as well as the famous Chain Bridge. By night the buildings on the riverbank are floodlit, and the effect is tremendously dramatic.
The great and the small
The bastion’s seven dazzling milk-white turrets represent the seven chieftains of the Magyar tribes who brought their people into the Carpathian Basin in the 9th century and founded Hungary, but the monument owes its name to rather more modest men: the medieval guild of fishermen who were responsible for defending this stretch of wall during the Middle Ages.
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