Do you love orchids? Visit the Spring Festival of Orchids and Bromelia in the Hungarian Agricultural Museum residing in the fairy tale like Vajdahunyad Castle in the City Park of Budapest.

Orchid Festival Budapest Vajdahunyad Castle – Cesar Cabrera Photography

The April weekend will feature various orchids and bromelia flowers, as well as orchid workshops and advice on how to keep orchids healthy and thriving, how to replant orchids, how to prevent or treat orchid diseases and more.

The event is frequently organized by the Hungarian Orchid Society. The Orchid Festival in Budapest is a highlighted  Budapest festival, much liked by amateurs and professionals alike,  also organized in the autumn season, some time in mid November.

It was the Renaissance king of Hungary, King Matthias (whose name you can recall from the Matthias Church on the Buda Castle Hill) who had many orchid varieties in the beautiful, Renaissance garden of the Buda Castle Royal Palace in the 15th century.

The fantastic Italian Renaissance gardens made a deep impression on the enlightened king (whose wife Queen Beatrice was from Italy too). While the famous garden survived the attacks of the Ottoman Turks who finally occupied the Buda Castle in the 1541 siege, in 1686, when the Hungarians and Austrians took back the castle from the Turkish sultan, the garden, along with the medieval royal castle was completely destroyed.

In the 18th century Maria Theresa, the Austro Hungarian Empress, had the terraces of the then Baroque Buda Castle turned into a beautiful terrace garden overlooking the river Danube. Then later, in the 19th century the garden was opened to the public by Archduke Joseph, Palatine of Hungary. After the 1849 siege when the Austrians conquered the Hungarian revolution, Franz Joseph had the garden restored. The first greenhouses of the Buda Castle Garden (Budavari Kert, Varkerteszet) were founded in 1854. In the 1870s, the Buda Castle Garden Bazaar (Varkert Bazar) designed by Miklos Ybl (the architect of the Budapest Opera House) made a fascinating and harmonious connection between the Buda Castle and the River Danube Promenade with its Neo-Baroque garden design

Unfortunately, You will not have a chance to see the authentic Hungarian orchid Cattleya hybrids (Blc Budavar) as the glass houses of the Hungarian orchid growing were exploded in the 1944 WW2 bombings. We only know about the hybrid from the documents that survived. But you may see some distantly related local varieties.

The Buda Castle Garden is now waiting for its historical restoration. The gardens of the Royal Palace have special micro climates due to the thick walls and hilltop locations. One of the lesser known garden of the Buda Castle gardens is the New World Garden, which can be reached on foot from the Lion Court, via the closed gardens of the Budapest History Museum.