The tour takes place in the downtown area of Pest, around some of the main landmarks you may already know from the general city walk – but with completely different stories.

From the meeting point at Erzsébet tér we start with a short introduction to post‑war Hungary and what “Communism” actually meant here in everyday life.

From there, highlights include:

• St Stephen’s Basilica area – you hear different stories than on the Original Free Budapest Tour: how religion, churches and the state related to each other under the one‑party system.
• Liberty Square (Szabadság tér) – a key space where different monuments stand next to each other and you can see how Hungarian history is remembered, re‑interpreted and sometimes manipulated in stone.
• Secret exit of a military bunker – your guide points out an unassuming detail connected to Cold War paranoia and defence plans.
• Last standing Soviet war memorial in the city centre – a communist monument surrounded by embassies and banks, and other symbols of “Soviet friendship”, which raises questions about memory, gratitude and occupation.
• 1956 uprising locations & Bronze Bullet Memorial – we walk past areas connected to the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, including the Bronze Bullet Memorial, and talk about how this uprising is remembered today.
• Hungarian Parliament – we finish near the Parliament building, where you connect what you have heard about the communist period with today’s political system and public debates.

Please note that this is not a classical sightseeing tour: the downtown of Pest has relatively few large, visible communist‑era buildings or statues left. It is more like an accessible “street lecture” with short walks between stops, photos, anecdotes and questions, rather than a long route with many different monuments.

Most statues from the communist era were removed from the city centre after the regime change in 1989. Many of them are now displayed in the open‑air statue park known as Memento Park on the Buda side, which you can visit separately if you would like to see more original monuments from that period.