Budapest Nyugati station

Nyugati pályaudvar (English: Western railway station), is one of the three main railway terminals in Budapest, Hungary. Known to locals and foreigners alike simply as Nyugati, the station is on the Pest side of Budapest, accessible by the 4 and 6 tramline and the M3 metro line.

History

The station was planned by August de Serres and was built by the Eiffel Company. It was opened on 28 October 1877. Previously another station stood in its place, the end station of Hungary's first railway line, the Pest–Vác line (constructed in 1846). This building was pulled down in order to construct the Grand Boulevard (Nagykörút) which is now smaller than the outer ringroad (Hungária körút - Hungary Boulevard) and the recently opened motorway ringroad M0 (2008).

The station gave name to the immediately adjacent Western Square ('Nyugati tér'), a major intersection where Teréz körút (Theresia Boulevard), Szent István körút (Saint Stephen Boulevard), Váci út (Váci Avenue), and Bajcsy-Zsilinszky út (Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Avenue) converge. The square also serves as a transport hub with several bus routes, tram routes 4 and 6, and a station on M3 of the Budapest Metro.

Since 2007 state railway MÁV has operated regular services between the terminal and Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport Terminal 1,^[1] although Terminal 1 has been closed since 2012 and all departures and arrivals have been consolidated in Terminal 2A and 2B, which is 4 kilometers away by airport bus 200E.^[2]

Beside the terminal and partially above its open area there is the WestEnd City Center shopping mall. Inside the station is a McDonald's restaurant which opened in 1988 described by tourism brochures as the "most elegant" McDonalds in the world.^[3]^[4]