Hortobágy National Park

A bird-watcher’s mecca, over 310 species have been spotted here. The fragile wetlands, marshes and saline grasslands are home to herons, egrets, spoonbills, storks, warblers, eagles and one of the world’s biggest birds, the great bustard, which reaches a metre (3.3ft) high and weighs 20kg (44lb).

While the casual wanderer can still get close to nature, a visit to the best parts of this huge park requires a guide, and travel must be done by horse, carriage or on foot. The wildlife preserve is about 40km (25mi) west of Debrecen, in the Great Plain.

Máriapócs

The tiny town of Máriapócs is an important place of pilgrimage. Devotees are drawn to a gorgeous Greek Catholic church, which houses the Weeping Black Madonna, an enormous and unbelievably ornate iconostasis that now takes pride of place above the altar.

Pope John Paul II hurried here in 1991 to pay homage to the miraculous image but what was surely known to him - and not to others at the time - is that this icon is not the original, but a 19th-century copy. The real one is kept in St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna.

Pannonhalma Abbey

Founded by Benedictine monks almost 1000 years ago, Pannonhalma Abbey has been destroyed and rebuilt many times and is now a crazy quilt of Turkish, Romanesque and Gothic architectural styles. The interior is beautiful despite the butchery, and includes a neoclassical library containing 300,000 volumes, making it the largest private library in Hungary.

Also inside the abbey are historical archives holding some of the earliest surviving examples of written Hungarian; a gallery with works by Dutch, Italian and Austrian masters from the 16th to 18th centuries; and, above the red-marble arched doorway, a fresco depicting the patron, St Martin of Tours.

Look down to the right near St Martin and you’ll see, written in Latin, perhaps the oldest graffiti in Hungary: ‘Benedict Padary was here in 1578′. Pannonhalma is a working monastery, and must be visited with a guide.