Matthias Church

Look at the roof first: those glazed tiles in orange, green and yellow diamonds are the signature of the church in front of you. Its official name is the Church of Our Lady, but everyone calls it Matthias Church, after King Matthias Corvinus, who rebuilt its south tower and married here twice: Catherine of Poděbrady in 1463 and Beatrice of Naples in 1476.

1Church to mosque, and back again

The church went up in the 13th century, when King Béla IV founded the town of Buda on this hill after the Mongol invasion of 1241. In 1541 the Ottomans took Buda and turned it into the city's main mosque until 1686. That year, during the Christian siege, the story goes that a cannonball brought down a wall and revealed an old statue of the Virgin hidden behind it, in front of Muslim worshippers at prayer, and that the city fell the same day.

2Coronations

After centuries of Baroque alterations, Frigyes Schulek restored its Gothic look between 1874 and 1896, including the roof you see today. Here, in 1867, Franz Joseph and Empress Elisabeth, "Sisi", were crowned king and queen of Hungary; Franz Liszt wrote his Coronation Mass for the ceremony. The last king, Charles IV, was crowned here on 30 December 1916.

Sisi, so loved in Hungary, received her queen's crown here.

3What to look for

• The ceramic roof in coloured diamonds.
• The Matthias Tower, pierced like stone lace.
• The Holy Trinity Column on the square: a vow against the plague, completed in 1713.