Culture & Traditions

Contemporary Hungarians value family, good food, and have a healthy respect for their resilient past. Evidence of it is everywhere across the country and alive in its traditions

Parliament in Budapest is housed in a Neo-Gothic style building that opened in 1902. The interior includes ten courtyards, thirteen passenger and freight elevators, twenty-seven gates, twenty-nine staircases, and six-hundred and ninety-one rooms (including more than two-hundred offices). The building has more than two-hundred sculptures on its walls. They depict national heroes, monarchs, allegorical figures like wisdom and knowledge, military leaders, and decorative sculptures like angels and mythical creatures. The building sits on the east side of the River Danube.

Hungary has been ethnically diverse from its beginnings. Today over 90% of the population is ethnically Hungarian, but there are also pockets of ethnic and cultural Slovaks, Romanians, and Germans

Hungary is a predominantly Christian country and more than half of the population are Roman Catholic. There are also other small groups of Calvinists, Lutherans, Greek Catholics, Orthodox, and Jews.

The Hungarian thermal baths are no joke. The wellness practice of dipping and lounging in hot water heated with geothermal energy feels like a connection to the Earth itself. Whether you’re easing aches and pains, meditating, or out on a weekend with friends, the mineral-rich waters are associated with various health benefits. Let yourself loose and completely succumb to a full spa treatment at one of the many spas across the country. There are over a thousand thermal springs in the country (100 in the Budapest area).. The first of these baths were erected by the Romans more than two-thousand years ago, and they remain a mainstay of everyday life in Hungary today.