Where to stay in Budapest

District V is two quarters with one postcode. Lipótváros in the north is the Parliament, the ministries, the Basilica and Szabadság tér - grand, quiet after office hours, and where the good coffee is. Belváros proper in the south is the pedestrian shopping streets, the Danube promenade and the hotels, and it is busy from breakfast until midnight.

Everything a first visit is for is inside a twenty-minute walk, and Deák Ferenc tér is the only station in Hungary where all four metro lines meet. Bus 100E from the airport terminates there too, which is the shortest airport transfer in the city.

The price is the catch and the food is the other one. Váci utca and the streets off it are where the padded-bill restaurants are, and Wikivoyage names the area outright. Walk two blocks inland, or cross the Small Boulevard into District VII, and you pay Hungarian prices again.

Terézváros is a wedge of Pest built along one street. Andrássy út was laid out to imitate the Champs-Élysées, and under it runs the M1, the oldest metro line in continental Europe, which drops you at the Opera, at Oktogon, at Heroes' Square and at the Széchenyi baths without ever changing.

That is the case for staying here. You are 10 to 15 minutes on foot from District V, you have the Opera, the ruin bars of District VII one street south, and the baths at the far end of your own avenue. Rooms cost roughly a third less than the same room across the Small Boulevard.

What you give up is the river - there is no Danube view in District VI - and quiet, if you book badly. The lower end near Király utca shares its nightlife with District VII, Oktogon is a permanent traffic junction, and the underpass at Nyugati tér is the one spot in the district Wikivoyage tells you not to look lost in.

Erzsébetváros is the smallest district in Budapest at 2 km², and the most concentrated. The Dohány Street Synagogue, the Rumbach and Kazinczy synagogues, Gozsdu udvar, Szimpla and about a hundred bars are inside a fifteen-minute walk of each other, and so are the flats and hotels above them.

That is the whole problem. The ruin bars are in the courtyards of residential buildings and they run until 04:00 from Thursday to Saturday. A room facing Kazinczy utca, Dob utca or Gozsdu udvar is not a quiet room, no matter what the listing says, and Budapest has no meaningful noise enforcement for these blocks.

Book here if the nightlife is why you came, or if you can get an address on the far side of the district - north of Király utca, or the stretch between Erzsébet körút and Keleti, which is ordinary inner-city Pest. Check the street name against a map of Kazinczy utca before you pay. The food is the other reason to come: this is where Budapest eats, from kosher delis to the best new restaurants in the city.

Józsefváros starts one street from the National Museum and runs east past Keleti station. The near half, Palotanegyed - the Palace Quarter, between Múzeum körút and the Grand Boulevard - is nineteenth-century palaces, renovated small streets, student cafés and rooms at two thirds of the District V price, twelve minutes from Deák Ferenc tér. Wikivoyage calls it a nice quarter with small quiet streets, and it is.

Cross the Grand Boulevard and it changes. The streets around Népszínház utca, Lujza, Dankó and Magdolna are the one part of central Pest that Wikivoyage names for after-dark avoidance - shady rather than dangerous, in its words, and CCTV-monitored, but not somewhere to walk home through at 02:00. This is also where the cheapest "central Budapest" listings are.

A booking site shows you both halves as District VIII, at similar prices, with the same photos of the National Museum. The dividing line is the Grand Boulevard: József körút. Check which side your street is on before you book, and if you are near Keleti, treat the station forecourt as a place to leave rather than to linger.

Inner Ferencváros is the best-value central address in Budapest. Kálvin tér is one metro stop from Deák Ferenc tér and fifteen minutes on foot, the Great Market Hall is at the end of the street, and Ráday utca is a pedestrian run of restaurants and terraces that fills with locals rather than stag parties. Rooms cost roughly half of District V.

It is also the flattest, easiest district for anyone with a suitcase or a pram: M3 and M4 both stop here, trams 4 and 6 cover the boulevard, tram 2 runs the riverbank past the Parliament, and Liberty Bridge puts the Gellért baths eight minutes away on foot.

The district is long. South of the Grand Boulevard it turns into Középső- and Külső-Ferencváros: renovated in parts, industrial in others, and Wikivoyage groups its outer streets with District VIII as somewhere locals avoid walking alone at night. Nothing there is worth the twenty-five extra minutes, so keep your address between Kálvin tér and Boráros tér.

District I is the castle side: Castle Hill itself, Víziváros along the river below it, Tabán and the northern slope of Gellért Hill. It is small, it is a UNESCO site, and the view from the Fisherman's Bastion over the Parliament is the photograph you came for.

Staying there is a different question. Wikivoyage puts the most expensive accommodation in Budapest on and around Castle Hill and says the same about its restaurants. Private cars cannot drive onto the hill, the buses 16 and 116 are the way up, and the funicular stops at 22:00. When the day-trippers leave, the hill has almost nothing open, and dinner means walking down and crossing a bridge.

Víziváros, the flat strip along the Danube below the castle, is the answer to most of this. Batthyány tér has M2 - one stop to Deák Ferenc tér - trams 19 and 41 along the embankment, the Király and Rudas baths within walking distance, and normal restaurants. Book on the hill for two nights and the view; book Víziváros for a week.

The bookable part of District XI is a strip about a kilometre wide along the river. Szent Gellért tér has the Gellért baths and the M4, Bartók Béla út behind it has become the city's gallery-and-wine-bar street, and Liberty Bridge puts the Great Market Hall and District IX eight minutes away on foot. It is quieter and cheaper than anything at the same distance in Pest.

Beyond that strip the district keeps going for another 30 km²: Lágymányos and the technical university, then Kelenföld, Gazdagrét, Albertfalva and the panel estates and shopping centres out towards Budaörs. Wikivoyage's own hotel listings for District XI include one advertised as 10 km south of the centre.

So the district name tells you almost nothing about where you will actually be. Check the address against Szent Gellért tér or Móricz Zsigmond körtér before booking, and remember that everything east of the river is a bridge away: the walk to Deák Ferenc tér is over half an hour.

District XIII has two halves and one name. Újlipótváros, the southern end just over Szent István körút from the Parliament, was built in the 1920s and 1930s and Wikivoyage calls it one of the finest residential areas in Budapest. It is small shops, cafés, the Comedy Theatre and Margaret Island at the end of the street, at prices well under District V, with the Parliament a fifteen-minute walk away.

North of Váci út the district turns into Angyalföld proper: socialist-era housing blocks, the Duna Plaza shopping centre and office parks around Dózsa György út. Nothing is wrong with it and nothing there is for a visitor either - it is where the cheap District XIII rooms are.

The practical test is the metro. Lehel tér and Dózsa György út on the M3, plus trams 4 and 6 at Jászai Mari tér, cover the good half; if your address is closer to Gyöngyösi utca, you are in the other one. Margaret Island - a car-free park with a running track, the open-air baths and the musical fountain - is the district's real amenity and the reason people come back.