Communist Budapest
ZoOm Hungary

If communism were a religion, Budapest would have been the sin city of the Soviet block. A taste of Capitalist decadence for the Eastern visitors and a taste of Communist reality for the Western tourists, Budapest was the nexus of two different worlds.

Communist Budapest

While a Russian tank sitting in the House of Terror is only a memory of the evil past, the brain washing and brutality can still be felt in the air in the building. Once the headquarters of the Nazis, it was taken over by the Communist Secret Police and currently is a museum.

Our expert historian will guide you. You start on the 2nd floor and slowly sink down to the basement, ending up in the former torture chambers. The dramatic tour combined with a high-tech presentation takes you back fifty years.

The 1956 Revolution was bloodily defeated by the Soviets, causing horrible damage in Budapest. Touch the bullet holes on the walls of the ruined buildings and feel the surge of the storm troopers. We take you to neighborhoods where the modern and old blend in the present and you find yourself in a documentary movie about the uprising.

This is the location where you meet an expert to drive a Trabant, the iconic East German car, to Memento Park, the new home of the old Communist statues. Trabant was the simplest and cheapest car made in the Communist world. It was made out of plastic and named the ‘paper Jaguar’ or the ‘Soap Box.’

As you tour Memento Park and Statue Park absorbing the sights, you will understand the ideology and nature of Communism. This will be facilitated by our expert guide, a history professor from the University of Budapest. The statues left by the Communists are designed to show you how small you are compared to the ‘great’ idea of Marxism and Communism.

You end the day on top of Gellert Hill, just next to the Statue of Liberty, where you feel the fresh breeze of freedom 26 years after the fall of Communism.

The tour can be matched with the ‘Budapest for History Buffs’ program of Zoom Hungary.

The Communist Budapest Tour features:

  • House of Terror
  • Iron Curtain
  • Trabant Drive
  • Ruin Bar Drink
  • Transformation Building
  • Meet Lenin
  • Memento Park
  • Stalin’s Boots
  • Statue of Liberty