While the magnificence of Budapest and the superb holdings of its museums now attract large numbers of visitors, the cultural riches of the rest of Hungary are still unjustly neglected.

Hungary was formed in the tenth century by horsemen from the Central Asian steppes. Emerging as a powerful and prosperous state at the end of the Middle Ages, it was the first country outside Italy to receive Renaissance architecture and to apply it with understanding. The subsequent Turkish conquest resulted in the elimination of nearly all political and cultural achievements, though impressive Romanesque and Gothic monuments remain, as well as tantalising fragments of great fifteenth-century Italianate palaces.

From the eighteenth century there was steady reconstruction as part of the Austrian empire, resulting in some magnificent Baroque and Classical buildings and large-scale decorative painting. In the nineteenth century the accelerating drive towards independence was accompanied by outstanding artistic and architectural creativity. This tour includes historic towns, churches, abbeys and country houses in the west and the north of the country.