Duna–Ipoly

Duna–Ipoly is the capital's national park, though it never says so: its forests begin where Budapest's outer districts end, and its centrepiece is the Danube Bend, the tight double curve where the river saws between the Börzsöny on one bank and the Visegrád Hills on the other before turning south for the city. The park, declared in 1997, gathers three ranges and two rivers — the volcanic Börzsöny, the limestone-and-dolomite Pilis, the andesite Visegrád Hills, plus floodplain strips along the lower Ipoly — into sixty thousand hectares of the Hungarian mid-mountains at their best.

Each range keeps its own character. The Börzsöny is the wild one, an eroded volcano rising to Csóványos at 938 metres, big enough for black storks, lesser spotted eagles, and valleys that see nobody on a weekday; narrow-gauge railways from Kismaros and Nagybörzsöny climb into it as they have since the forestry days. The Pilis is the karst one — at 756 metres the roof of the whole Transdanubian Range — with dry dolomite grasslands that botanists prize for endemic flax, and caves under the ridge in the hundreds; its beech gorges hide the Dera ravine and the medieval ruins of the Pauline order, the only monastic order Hungary founded, whose mother house stood at Pilisszentkereszt. The Visegrád Hills are the theatrical ones: lava-domed viewpoints stacked over the Bend, crowned by the citadel where the kingdom's crown was kept and where the palace of King Matthias terraces down to the water.

The set-piece walks are correspondingly famous. Prédikálószék, the "preacher's pulpit", drops a sheer viewpoint straight onto the river's hairpin — the lookout tower on its summit frames the single most photographed panorama in inland Hungary — and the neighbouring Rám-szakadék is a rung-and-chain scramble up a narrow wet gorge that has become the country's favourite adventure hike. Dobogókő, across the ridge, is where organised Hungarian hiking began with a stone shelter in 1898; the resort clearing on its summit is one of the many settlement enclaves threaded out of the park's boundary, which is why the mountain's most crowded viewpoint technically stands just outside the park that surrounds it.

What's worth knowing before you go

Access is the easiest of any Hungarian park: commuter trains to Nagymaros and the Szob line serve the Börzsöny side, boats and buses run the Visegrád bank, and the whole Bend works as day trips from Budapest. Do Rám-szakadék early, on a dry day, uphill only (descending against traffic in the wet gorge is where the accidents happen), and combine it with Prédikálószék and a descent to Dömös for the boat home. For the Börzsöny, ride the Királyrét narrow-gauge in and walk out over Csóványos — the summit's frontier-tower views reach the High Tatras in clear winter air. Spring wild-cherry blossom in the Pilis dolomite and autumn in the Bend's beech are the two great seasons. The connoisseur's detour is the lower Ipoly: flat, unvisited floodplain meadows where corncrakes rasp within an hour of the capital.