Vajdahunyad Castle

This castle is a fake, and it is one of the best fakes in Europe. Vajdahunyad Castle was built in 1896 for Hungary's millennial celebrations as a temporary exhibition piece — a greatest-hits mashup of Hungarian architectural styles crammed into a single building. Architect Ignác Alpár combined Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque elements, replicating fragments of famous buildings from across historical Greater Hungary. It was so popular that they rebuilt it in permanent stone and brick between 1904 and 1908.

The castle sits on Széchenyi Island in the middle of City Park's boating lake, approached by a mock drawbridge over a shallow moat. The Romanesque section copies the chapel from Ják in western Hungary. The Gothic wing references the Transylvanian Hunyad Castle — the actual fortress that gives this replica its name. The Baroque section nods to various Hungarian manor houses. Walking around the building is like flipping through an architectural textbook at triple speed.

Inside, the Museum of Hungarian Agriculture has occupied the castle since 1907, making it one of the oldest agricultural museums in Europe. The exhibits cover everything from medieval horse breeding to Hungarian wine production, and the building itself is far more interesting than that description makes it sound.

In front of the castle sits the hooded bronze statue of Anonymous — the medieval chronicler who wrote the earliest surviving account of Hungarian history. Nobody knows who he was, which is why the statue shows a figure with a cowl pulled over his face. Touching his pen is supposed to bring good luck, and the bronze has been rubbed gold by millions of wishful hands.