Budapest sits on over 120 thermal springs, producing 70 million liters of thermal water daily. The Romans recognized the opportunity; the Ottomans who ruled for 150 years developed it. The Rudas Bath, built in the 16th century, preserves its original octagonal pool beneath a domed ceiling where steam rises into shafts of light. The Szechenyi Bath, opened in 1913 in City Park, offers outdoor pools where chess players soak and contemplate moves in water regardless of weather.

The baths are not spa culture but daily life. Budapestians visit for health, socialization, and the particular pleasure of hot water in cold weather. The culture survived communism - the baths were too useful to eliminate - and now serves tourists who discover that soaking is the best way to understand the city. The thermal tradition connects Budapest to its Ottoman past, its Habsburg ambitions, and its present identity as a place where taking time is not laziness but wisdom.

Buda Castle crowns Castle Hill, rebuilt repeatedly after destruction - by Mongols in 1241, by Ottomans in 1541, by Habsburgs in 1686, by Soviets in 1945. The current palace is largely reconstruction, the post-war communist version now housing the Hungarian National Gallery. The Matthias Church nearby, its roof covered in colorful Zsolnay tiles, was mosque during Ottoman rule, the minaret removed when the Habsburgs retook the city.

The Fisherman's Bastion, the neo-Romanesque terrace behind the church, was built between 1895 and 1902 as a viewing platform, its towers representing the seven Magyar tribes that founded Hungary. The view encompasses the Parliament across the river, the bridges spanning the Danube, and the flat expanse of Pest stretching toward horizons that the hills of Buda cannot see. The Castle District is tourist territory now, funicular and crowds, but the views justify the cliches.

The Hungarian Parliament Building took 17 years to construct, requiring 40 million bricks, 40 kilograms of gold, and the labor of over 100,000 workers. The design, by Imre Steindl, combines Gothic Revival exterior with a Renaissance dome, creating a building that seems to stretch the entire waterfront. The interior is equally extravagant - the central staircase, the domed hall where the Holy Crown of Hungary is displayed, the chambers where Hungarian democracy struggles to maintain itself.

The Parliament was built to house a legislature that barely functioned under Habsburg rule, continued under communist control, and operates now under a government that critics call authoritarian. The building's grandeur exceeds its occupants' dignity, the architecture expressing ambitions that politics has not matched. Budapest's Parliament is one of Europe's largest, and the discrepancy between container and contents reflects Hungarian history - always aspiring, rarely achieving, preserving the aspiration in stone.

Budapest's Jewish population numbered over 200,000 before World War II, the largest in Central Europe. The Dohany Street Synagogue, completed in 1859, is the largest synagogue in Europe and second-largest in the world, its Moorish Revival architecture visible for blocks. The ghetto that the Nazis established around the synagogue held 70,000 Jews; half died before Soviet forces liberated the city in 1945.

The Tree of Life memorial in the synagogue's garden commemorates the victims, each leaf bearing a name. The Holocaust Memorial Center documents what happened; the shoes along the Danube promenade - 60 pairs of iron shoes marking where Jews were shot into the river - serve as scattered memorial. Budapest's Jewish community survives, diminished but present, the heritage tourism that brings visitors to the synagogue quarter a complicated form of remembrance.

The ruin bars of Budapest occupy abandoned buildings in the old Jewish quarter, their interiors decorated with salvaged furniture, mismatched art, and the deliberate aesthetic of decay. Szimpla Kert, which opened in 2002 in a former factory, pioneered the concept; dozens of imitators followed, creating a nightlife district unlike anything in Western Europe. The bars serve cheap drinks to international crowds who come specifically for the atmosphere that Budapest invented.

The ruin bars represent Budapest's talent for making beauty from wreckage - literally, in buildings that would otherwise have been demolished, and figuratively, in a city that has experienced more destruction than most. The aesthetic is post-communist but not political, nostalgic but not sentimental, a way of inhabiting spaces that formal renovation would have sanitized. The ruin bars have become tourist attractions, which changes them, but the original impulse - finding pleasure in what remains - persists.