# Underground Budapest: Caves, Churches and Cold War Bunkers

> Dive into Budapest's secret underground world: 200 caves, labyrinths, churches and Cold War bunkers. We cover what to see and how to see it.

- URL: https://langandtrip.com.ua/en/article/podzemni-budapesht-peshcher-tserkvy-y-bunker-vremen-kholodnoi-voin/
- Language: en
- Published: 2025-10-24
- Categories: Culture, Historic Sites, Leisure, Museums, Tours, Hungary

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Habsburg palaces, the romantic banks of the Danube and historic spa baths draw crowds to Budapest, but the city also hides an entire world beneath the surface. Quite literally underground.

While one half of the city, Pest, is flat, the winding hills of Buda are rich with secret labyrinths, hidden bunkers and cave adventures. In all, there are roughly 200 caves.

Budapest's underground world owes its existence to the city's spa baths, or more precisely to their waters, which carved out this network of caves. Here are some of the standout sights to seek out when you travel here:

## Budapest's Natural Caves

One of the best things about Budapest is how close it sits to nature. Less than half an hour by bus from the city center, where the outer District II gives way to lush hills, you'll find a string of natural caves well worth a visit.

Beautiful crystalline formations decorate the caves beneath Szemlo Hill. In nearby Palvolgy, the caves are more familiar, complete with stalactites and stalagmites.

Palvolgy Cave, 162 Szepvolgyi Street, Budapest

Szemlo Hill Caves, 35 Pusztaszeri Street, Budapest

Buda and Pest: One City, Two Personalities

## Caving Beneath the City

Adventurous cavers who don't mind getting dirty, squeezing through narrow gaps and scrambling up slippery walls are in luck.

The Palvolgy caves actually make up the longest cave network in Hungary, stretching from the valley where the show caves are located all the way to Matyas Hill in Budapest.

Descending a metal ladder into a pit some 10 meters deep, tours emerge into a chamber known as the "chapel," once used as an underground place of worship. The three-hour tour grows tougher as the air thins and the passages narrow, but the guide's humor and encouragement more than make up for the physical strain.

Tours can be booked with an English-speaking guide for groups of more than four. The ticket price covers the guide, all necessary equipment and admission to the caves.

Palvolgy Cave Tours, 162 Szepvolgyi Street, Budapest

## The Hospital in the Rock

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Castle Hill, the ridge overlooking the Danube that is home to Budapest's sprawling palace complex, also guards a few underground treasures. Unlike the city's other caves, these passages have been in use for centuries, and they tell a string of chilling stories from the city's past.

Set into the hillside on the road that leads up to the castle, the Hospital in the Rock is technically not part of the original cave system, though it connects to it. Once an underground hospital used during World War II, especially during the Siege of Budapest, it eventually became a secret nuclear bunker during the Cold War.

The museum can only be visited on a guided tour, which runs every hour in English and Hungarian.

The tours lead visitors through the tunnels to the old hospital and end in a radiation-contamination room, where you can play with an air-raid siren. Eerie wax figures lend an air of authenticity to the horrors of wartime conditions, when a hospital built for just 60 to 70 patients took in more than 600 wounded.

Hospital in the Rock, 4/C Lovas Street, Budapest

Hidden Places in Budapest Worth Discovering

## Dracula's Prison and the Labyrinth

The Labyrinth is part of the natural cave system beneath Castle Hill. It shows signs of habitation stretching back to prehistoric times, with people living here right up to the 11th and 12th centuries.

Since then the caves have served as wine cellars and quarries, but they are wrapped in intriguing myths. The Turks put them to military use in the 16th century, and archaeological evidence even hints at an underground harem.

One of the Labyrinth's main attractions is Vlad Tepes, better known as Vlad the Impaler, or Dracula, who spent a stretch of time here as a prisoner.

A visit to the Labyrinth is a vivid experience, filled with wax figures dressed in old opera costumes.

An overworked smoke machine and an eerie soundtrack fill a damp corner known as Dracula's Chamber. An extra dose of spookiness: after 6 p.m. visitors are led through the dark caves by lantern and have to find their own way out in the darkness.

Labyrinthus, 9 Uri Street, Budapest, or 4/a Lovas Street, Budapest

## The Cave Church of Gellert Hill

Gellert Hill is a Budapest landmark. Towering over the Danube, it surveys the whole city and guards its own network of caves.

Unlike the caves beneath the city's other hills, most of these are closed off.

The main cave open to the public, St. Ivan's, holds a small church whose entrance faces one of Budapest's most famous bathhouses, the Gellert Baths.

Using the cave as a church is a fairly recent idea. Pauline monks occupied it in the 1920s, but it was sealed off for decades after the Soviet Red Army captured Budapest in 1945.

Cave Church, 1 Szent Gellert Embankment, Budapest