About the Author

Dr. Joe Hajdu is a cultural geographer. He is attached to Deakin University

in Melbourne, Australia as an Honorary Fellow. In a long academic career
he has carried out research in Australia, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
His previous books have included a cultural geographic study of Australia
aimed at visitors who seek to immerse themselves into the topic beyond
what the standard tourist guide provides, a description of the cultural impact
of the Japanese on the Gold Coast in northeast Australia in the 1980s, a
study of the effect on economic linkages and peoples lives of the West-East
German border prior to 1989, and a recent book on the transformation of
Berlin after 1990 from being a marginalized, divided city to again being the
capital and culturally vibrant metropolis of a reunited Germany. Budapest: A
History of Grandeur and Catastrophe is his first research and book project
carried out in his birthplace, Hungary.

Joe Hajdu

BUDAPEST:
A HISTORY OF GRANDEUR AND
CATASTROPHE

Copyright Joe Hajdu (2015)

The right of Joe Hajdu to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for
damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British
Library.

ISBN 978 1 78455 218 3

www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2015)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd.
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LB

Printed and bound in Great Britain

Acknowledgments

The idea for this book has been floating around in my head for quite some
time, but other writing projects took precedence, until my wife Judy must
have felt nothing would ever happen and started muttering: You should
really start working on a Budapest book. That city was an important part of
your life. Also, that will give us an excuse to spend longer times there than
we have until now. That did it. Id often felt I would really like to spend
more time in Budapest to explore it in greater detail and try to immerse
myself in its complexities. Earlier visits to the city had meant meeting
relatives and friends. Outside this circle I had never really had more than
superficial contact with Hungarians. Working on this book gave that
opportunity, and through these discussions with people I had sought out, I
have gained a great deal of information on Budapest and benefited from
these peoples experiences, insights and opinions. These discussants have
also given me something less specific: they have given me a better sense of
the psyche of the Budapest person, their feelings, hopes and fears, not to
mention a sense of the touches of that bittersweet Budapest irony to which I
have always been partial.
So firstly I would like express my thanks to the people in Budapest who
agreed to give me of their time so generously and entered into a detailed
discussion with me about the issues which I had raised with them, and
sharpened my awareness of many things about the city that previously I had
only dimly sensed. In some cases they also gave me specialised literature
which was freighted back to Australia and so made a valuable contribution
to the richness of the story that follows. My discussants (in alphabetical
order) are: Gbor Aczl, Tams Antalffy, Antal Arato, Gbor Demszky,
Tams Egedy, Jzsef Finta, Gbor Gaylhoffer, Viktor Iro, Gyrgy Kvs
and his partner Eva Fldvry, Gbor Nndor, Gbor Szkely, Szabolcs Szita,
Ivn Tosics and Andrs Trk. I thank them all most sincerely.
There is another group of people who have facilitated my book project,
not specifically through an interview, but through various other ways. For
example, by being the intermediary between me and an interviewee, making
me aware of sources of information or helping me collect information,
7

helping me access historical photographs and their transmission by

computer, or in casual conversation giving me clues that set me thinking
about issues I had not previously considered or that led to new sources of
information. In this way, they have been most helpful in the furtherance of
this book project. They are: Elayne Antalffy, Jnos Borbly, Mikls
Bordcs, Ferenc Herczeg, Judit Jrend, Rita Katz, Sandor Szakly and Jnos
Vti.
I hope that none of these people I have mentioned will be disappointed
with my book.
Finally, my wife Judy definitely deserves another mention. Apart from
being very supportive of this whole project, more specifically, she has
encouraged me to bounce ideas off her that have made my text more
interesting. She has also been of great help in the word processing of the
manuscript, and been an invaluable help with the proofreading of the text.
Nagyon szpen ksznm!

Contents
Introduction

13

1. The Historic Heart of Budapest: The Castle District

22

2. Golden Age of the Metropolis: Fin de Sicle Budapest

38

3. Vilmos Vazsonyi and the Budapest Haute Bourgeoisie

55

4. Jewish Budapest: Triumph and Tragedy of its Life and Culture

66

5. Budapest after 1945: Tyranny and Social Cleansing

83

6. Revolution and the Transformation of Budapest under Socialism

125

7. Kzraktr Utca 12a: A Mirror of the Changing Budapest

141

8. Budapest: From Moribund Communism to Volatile Capitalism

146

9. Gbor Demszky and Governing Post-Communist Budapest

162

10. Budapest Today: Its Changing Scene, Successes and Dilemnas

178

11. From the Broadway of Budapest to The Island Rock Festival: Culture
and Entertainment in Contemporary Budapest
194
Afterword

212

Bibliography

216

10

Sources of the illustrations

Plates 1.1 & 2.1 Orszgos Szchnyi Knyvtr;
Plates 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 2.4 & 6.2 Budapest Antikvrium;
Plates 2.2, 2.3, 3.1 & 4.2 Kiscelli Muzeum;
Plates 5.2, 6.3, 10.4 & 11.4 Mdiaszolgltats-tmogat s Vagyonkezel Alap
(MTVA);
Plates 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 4.1 4.3, 4.4, 5.1, 5.3, 5.4, 6.1, 6.4, 6.5, 7.1, 8.1, 8.2,
8.3, 8.4, 8.5, 9.1, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, 11.1, 11.2, 11.3, 11.5, 11.6 &
11.7 Joe Hajdu.

11

Legend: 1. Matthias Church and Fishermens Bastion

2. Royal Palace
3. Gellert Hill
4. Szchnyi Chain Bridge
5. Parliament House
6. Opera House
7. St. Stephens Basilica
8. National Museum
9. Heroes Square and Millenium Monument

12

INTRODUCTION

Budapest has been somewhere in my mind all my life. For most of us the
memories of childhood are usually fragmentary and blurred, yet these
blurred memories often contain some scenes of surprising sharpness that
have embedded themselves into our psyche. How can we tell the extent to
which they have helped form our opinions, prejudices and secret fears? I can
only hope to surmise what the experiences of my early years have done to
me.
For the first five and a half years of my life I spent long periods in our
apartment in Budapest. I remember it as a modern, bright, airy place with a
balcony on the first floor of a small block, with a lawn and a few flowers
between the front door and the gate leading to the footpath on the street.
Standing on the balcony and looking to one side, I recall some hills in the
distance. They must have been the Buda Hills, and looking the other way, I
have a vague sense of flatness and buildings half hidden by trees. But it is
specific images and specific experiences of Wartime Budapest which are
etched most deeply into my memory.
It was the summer of 1944 and the tide of war had definitely turned in
favour of the Allies. For most people nocturnal bombing raids on Budapest
by Allied bombers had become part of daily life. I would go to bed and be
just starting to slide into my slumber when the piercing wail of the air raid
sirens would wake me up with a jolt, or my mother or father would race into
the bedroom and shake me to wake up and hurriedly pull me down with
them into the cellar. As we raced down the stairs there were mumblings
about that foolhardy woman in the apartment above us who refused to go
down into the cellar. She claimed she knew better, and said that she would
only seek shelter if there was real danger (during the siege of Budapest the
building was damaged by fire, but I have never found out if on that occasion
the woman upstairs did go down into the cellar or not). The air raids would

13

last for the best part of the night, so it was usually by the light of dawn that
we were able to climb the stairs back up to our apartment. There was one
occasion during that summer which I remember quite specifically: the
bombers had come, and down in the cellar the noise of the exploding bombs
and air pressure vibrations that followed them seem to have been particularly
severe; eventually they ceased, it was still again outside and it was safe to go
back up. We entered the apartment and walked across the living room onto
the balcony. It was dawn and looking towards the Pest side of the Danube
River the sky was streaked a bright red and grey. Ah, my father said, it
looks as if theyve really hit the factories and shipyards on Csepel Island (in
the Danube) this time.
As much as they could, people tried to continue living normal lives, but
the reminders that life was not normal kept intruding. One day my mother
and I were walking in a park not far from our apartment. It was a sunny
afternoon and there were quite a few people strolling on the paths and
enjoying the ambience of the park. That afternoon the place was like an oasis
of peace in a wartime city. I remember casually watching the people walking
past until something caught my eye. Some of the men and women I saw had
a yellow star sewn onto their jacket or blouse. I had no idea what the yellow
star meant and why these people had it on their clothes. I couldnt help but
ask my mother. This afternoon as always, she chattered away in her usual
manner, but on hearing my question she suddenly leant over towards me,
lowered her voice and said: They are Jews, thats why. I dont remember
whether I pursued the matter any further. I suspect an answer at this level
would have satisfied the curiosity of a five-year-old.
By the late autumn of 1944 the front-line between the German army and
the advancing Soviet forces was moving inexorably closer to Budapest. The
German high command had decided to make Budapest a fortress that they
were determined to hold at all cost. This meant that the Soviet siege of the
city was going to be long and bloody. We had already left the family estate
in eastern Hungary to escape the fighting and now we were getting ready to
flee again. Petrol was not to be had for private use under any circumstances,
so using our car was out of the question. My father had organised that a
number of our horses from the estate be brought to Budapest and
accommodated in stables on the Pest side of the river. It was now 4 th of
November, the Russian army was approaching Budapest, and we had
decided to flee westwards by horse and carriage. My father, two brothers and
a hired hand from the estate went to get the horses and carriages. They
would drive them across one of the Danube River bridges, bring them to our
Buda home and we would then pack what we could and set off the next day.
As it happened, the bridge they had used to cross the Danube was the
Margaret Bridge at the northern end of central Budapest. It was midday and
the bridge was packed with pedestrians, trams, carriages, buses and cyclists.
14

My father and his party crossed the bridge and were two or three hundred
meters away from it on the Buda side when they heard a huge explosion.
They swung around and saw that the Margaret Bridge had been blown sky
high. Close to two hundred people lost their lives, the exact total has never
been established. As part of their strategy to slow the Soviet advance the
Germans had mined all the bridges across the Danube. It was claimed that
gas leaking from a pipeline on the bridge had ignited the gunpowder, but
there were also rumours that members of the anti-German resistance in
Budapest had set off the charges; we will never know. My mother and I
heard the noise of the shattering explosion in our apartment, and had an
agonising half hour or so wondering whether we would see the rest of the
family again.
We did set off the next morning and I remember sitting next to my
parents in one of the carriages as the horses hooves clip-clopped through the
outer suburbs of Budapest. When we reached the open country my father
turned around to look at the Buda hills retreating towards the horizon. He
nudged my mother and said: Turn around and have a last look. Im sure you
wont see Budapest again.
He was quite right, she didnt see Budapest again. As for me, two
decades later, after having grown-up in the Antipodes, I did see Budapest
again. I went there in July 1965 and was shocked by what I saw. There was
an all pervading greyness about the city. One had to look behind the peeling
stucco and paint to detect the past grandeur of its major buildings. Budapest
had not really overcome its wounds from the siege of the winter of 1944-45
when the bloody 1956 revolution occurred. Even in the early 1960s battle
scars and bullet holes were a common sight, and the faces of the people were
like a parchment on which one could read the hardship and sorrow they had
experienced in the preceding couple of decades. I stayed with a friend and
his parents. They were very hospitable to me, and so I wanted to buy them a
present of some sort. There wasnt much to be had in the shops. I finally
found a plastic water jug which I thought my friends mother might find
useful. Well, when I gave it to her, she was absolutely thrilled. She treated it
like some rare, precious memento of my visit. The family lived in a large
double-storey Buda villa whose owner had left and it was now subdivided
into a number of small flats. The dwelling was in a shocking state of
disrepair. The main room in which my friend and his parents lived made me
gasp: the ceiling was sagging dangerously, and to prevent it collapsing, two
strategically placed timber columns had been inserted into the central part of
the room. You had to duck and weave around these columns when going
from the table to the couch/bed or to open a window. It was this room and
everything it said about Budapest that I remembered most vividly from my
return visit to the city as a young adult.

15

Since then fifty years have passed, and needless to say, much has
changed in Budapest. The city today is very different, and the signs of its
recent transformation, achievements and problems are there to see: the large
number of statues, memorials, monuments, wall plaques and street names
that show a determined desire to remember events and to honour people
involved in the sharp twists and turns of Hungarian history; the stately and
ornate buildings of Budapests glory years the roofs and walls of some now
herald the arrival of capitalism through large advertisers billboards; the
gleaming new hotels on the riverfront for the well-healed foreign business
person and tourist; a colourful caf life that strikes an echo of the old
Budapest; the attractive landscaping of the pedestrianized streets in the
centre; the large new arts centre with its rich cultural fare on the banks of the
Danube; young people from all over Europe and beyond crowding into one
of the citys numerous improvised bars; the plethora of small shops that
seem to exist more on hope than profit; peeling stucco and paint on old
apartment buildings that say something about the poverty of their residents;
the strikingly numerous pawn shops in many parts of the city; homeless men
on some park benches and in alcoves of buildings arranging their meagre
belongings to convey a sense of permanence; the sight of new office
complexes and designer label shops that show their owners/financiers faith
in the future of the city; the large prefabricated housing estates on its fringe,
and the increasing number of new villas discreetly half-hidden on wooded
hillsides and in verdant hollows in the more desirable locations of the city.
Budapest today is all this and more. It is a city trying to come to terms
with the inheritance of its recent history, while not being quite certain what
its place will be in the Europe of the 21 st Century. It is a uniquely interesting
place, at the same time the experience of the convulsions that have rocked it
during the last hundred years it shares with the likes of Prague, Warsaw,
Belgrade and Bucharest. In 1989-90 all these cities experienced the
implosion of the socialist system. Many of the people living in these cities
believed that somehow this would herald a return to normalcy. Their idea
of normalcy was the erasure of socialist internationalism and a longing for a
return to their old national culture combined with contemporary West
European standards of living and social security. However, the world doesnt
work like that. Over forty years of socialist dictatorship had a major impact
on the institutions, the society, the political culture, economy, not to mention
the attitudes and behaviour of the people living in these countries. When
socialism ended the initial widespread euphoria was quickly followed by the
sobering realisation that becoming like an Austria, West Germany or France
in a few short years was an illusion. The adjustment to a new world would
take much longer than that.
Many people who had only known east European socialism were not
ready for the psychological readjustment required for the world of
16

competitive capitalism. There were some people who did quickly perceive
that new skills were now needed to succeed and used the collapse of the
socialist order and the legal, institutional and moral chaos that followed to
apply their entrepreneurial skills for legitimate business purposes or the most
dubious financial ends. Such blatant acts of financial criminality did not help
the new, freely elected, largely inexperienced national and local
governments to establish institutions and develop and conduct policies that
would guide the transition from socialism to a free market economy and
democratic institutions. At the same time, while these eastern European
countries were going through these tumultuous changes, their neighbours in
western Europe were themselves being increasingly challenged by the
pressures of globalisation, particularly the rise of Asian competitors with
more flexible labour markets and lower costs. In the early 1990s German,
Austrian and French companies quickly saw Warsaw, Prague and Budapest
as a low-cost site to manufacture their products. But twenty years later, with
the lure of an even cheaper China, Thailand, Turkey and India, the economic
attractiveness of eastern Europe is less obvious.
A large city like Budapest today encapsulates many of these issues and
problems of the tumultuous transition from socialism to the globalised free
enterprise world. It is also a major European metropolis, and the capital of a
country with a proud, distinctive culture that makes it a uniquely fascinating
place. So an account of Budapest is both worthwhile for its own sake as well
as for the insight it provides into the cultural-economic processes that have
affected the eastern half of the European continent during the last two and a
half decades.
This book does not purport to be a comprehensive history of Budapest, a
number of other writers have undertaken that task in an admirable manner.
But to understand the present one cannot ignore some aspects of the past.
One has to start with the historic core of Budapest. This is the small castle
district of Buda, perched on top of a prominent hilltop, close to the western
banks of the Danube. This settlement was and still is a unique place that is
quite separate from the rest of the metropolis and visible from many parts of
inner Budapest. Because of its historic and symbolic importance, no account
of Budapest would be complete without an account of its appearance, role in
the history of the city, and the lives of some of the people who have lived
there and its role in the Budapest of today.
However it was the tumultuous growth Budapest experienced from the
second half of the 19th Century to the outbreak of the First World War that
have made the city what it is today. For reasons which I will attempt to make
clear, those were the formative years of modern Budapest. Despite two
world wars, revolutions, widespread destruction and reconstruction, and
numerous changes of regime, the imprint set by the 1867-1914 period still
17

defines much of the city that visitors see. Where more recent developments
have occurred, their architectural style is no doubt different, but they have
been inserted into a spatial and configurative pattern set during the modern
citys formative era. It is only in the outer districts, such as on their route
from Ferihegy Airport into central Budapest, that the visitor will be aware of
new urban shapes and forms dominating the landscape. For example, old
village buildings having been overwhelmed by housing estates and
warehouses, freeways cutting through residential suburbs, or a shopping mall
that is a modest version of what is found in suburban Chicago, London or
Melbourne.
The grandeur of Budapest in its glory days at the beginning of the 20 th
Century was found in the central city on the Pest side of the Danube. The
impressive, public buildings, the neoclassical, Neo-Renaissance and
historicist apartment blocks, the boulevards, the numerous cafs, restaurants,
and theatres were the milieu of the rising middle class of Budapest.
Nagykrut, or the Grand Boulevard and its tangential Andrssy t became
the most prestigious addresses of this haute bourgeoisie. The buildings there
today still attest to the past presence of this social group. A chapter will
describe the world of fin-de-sicle Budapest and the life of a family that
enjoyed its privileges and give glimpses of the poverty and squalor that
existed behind it. It must also be said a few progressive public figures did
attempt to improve the lives of this large working class. The Wekerle garden
city project on the outskirts of Budapest will be explored as an example of
this endeavour.
The catastrophe of the First World War changed everything for Hungary.
Much of the optimism was gone, and the financial situation of many
members of the middle class became much more precarious. World War
Two was a new convulsion for Hungary, particularly for the many Jewish
members of Budapests bourgeoisie and its poorer orthodox brethren. A
chapter will introduce the rich and diverse world of Jewish Budapest and
through the lives of a number of its members describe the catastrophe that
befell them in 1944-45. Hungary, allied to Nazi Germany, was again on the
losing side of the War and paid the price. Soviet occupation led to the
imposition of a Communist dictatorship, and this time it was its political
opponents and members of the old Hungarian upper and middle classes that
were its main victims. Using newly compiled information, a chapter will
describe the story of the fate of large groups of Budapests aristocratic and
bourgeois families during the 1948-53 period.
Budapest under socialism did not stand still. While the old building
heritage of inner Budapest was largely left as was, large prefabricated
housing estates were built on the fringes of the city to deal with the housing
shortage and accommodate the flow of people into the metropolis who came
18

to work in its expanding machinery plants, chemical factories and shipyards.

Today these housing estates are still home to a surprisingly large part of the
population of Budapest. So the role they play in the life of the city and how
they have been adapted to changing expectations and needs, belongs to any
study of the metropolis.
The implosion of the Communist dictatorship and the negotiated transfer
of power to a subsequently democratically elected government in 1989-90
occurred with a suddenness that surprised most Hungarians. This process
was mirrored at every level of government, including in the city of Budapest.
Though the distinct politico/ administrative organs of the metropolitan city
government had continued to exist during the forty years of the socialist
regime, power was centralized in the hands of the national Communist Party
Central Committee. Hence issues of the division of responsibility and power
were largely irrelevant. This meant that the tumultuous change to democracy
in Budapest brought issues of governance to the fore, coupled with the
division of public assets among different levels of government, and then
their possible private sale. At the same time Budapest saw a flood of new
arrivals. This was driven in part by a euphoric sense of freedom, or their
grim dislocation through the collapse of old inefficient state enterprises in
which they had been employed. This resulted in Budapest being confronted
with a series of complex, at times interlocking problems that would have
tested the skills of an experienced city government, instead it had newly
elected leaders busy defining their respective powers, inexperienced in
working within a democratic political culture and confronted with economic
decisions for which there was no precedent. The problems with which
Budapest was confronted in 1989-90 and the way it managed them are still
issues for Budapest today. Hence they are a key theme of this book, a theme
that repeated itself in the other major cities of the now ex-Communist bloc.
What made these problems, or at least their management or solution
even less tractable was a more profound moral issue, namely the absence or
weakness of civil society and public morality. The traditional morality of
Judaic-Christian bourgeois culture, which more or less is still the yardstick
for Western countries, though by no means always practised, was
consciously undermined by the Communist regime to be replaced by the
superior morality of a homo sovieticus. In Hungary, in fact in much of
eastern Europe, this did not succeed, and in the final phase of the Communist
era it gave way to Kadarism that ceased to proselytize amongst the
population, but maintained its public Marxist rhetoric. At the same time the
Kadar regime reached policy compromises with the Hungarian people that
contradicted its rhetoric. This it sought to do to gain the acquiescence of the
population after the trauma of the 1956 revolution. The result was that in
Hungarian public life there developed a wide gap between what was said and
what was done, or at least, what was not penalised. After 1989 this general
19

hypocrisy in public life did not facilitate the creation and functioning of a
positive, participatory democratic public culture. No discussion of Budapest
today would be complete without some mention of a certain moral malaise
that is still there a good two decades later.
At the same time in the Budapest of today, many important
developments of the last two decades can be seen: the results of widespread
private investment in offices, hotels, logistics operations and private
apartment complexes. There are also urban rehabilitation and beautification
projects that are visible to all visitors and are the subject of laudatory
comment by local residents. It is this city that the large flow of visitors to
Budapest see today. They are symbols of a city that is trying to define itself
as part of the affluent, increasingly globalised world. Behind it are economic
and population changes that have had a far-reaching impact on the city.
These will be sketched briefly in the text.
There have been individual success stories in the Budapest of today. A
large number of entrepreneurial men and women saw their chance and took
it. Through inexperience, bad luck, political chicanery or uncertain economic
conditions some have failed, or are in a constant struggle to keep their
businesses afloat. Others have been singularly successful. Examples of both
successful local and foreign entrepreneurship in Budapest will be mentioned.
They illustrate the optimistic face of Budapest today. Another aspect of the
vibrant and cosmopolitan Budapest is its arts and entertainment scene:
theatre, classical and pop music, cinema, museums, art galleries. Despite
increasing financial stringencies the city offers a rich fare for both its own
citizens and for visitors. It is to enjoy such functions, as well as to savour the
citys gastronomic delights and the ambience of its Danube River setting that
a large flow of visitors come to Budapest and so help underpin its still less
than robust economy.
Finally, there is the need to briefly consider the impact on Budapest of
periodic political change within Hungary since the implosion of Communist
dictatorship. In all democratic states, the effect of political change at the
national level resonates to lower levels of government. But in Hungary this
has been particularly sharp whenever there has been a change of power at the
national level, that is, during 1998-2002 and since 2010. To understand this,
we have to consider the very deep chasm that exists in Hungary between
Left and Right, a chasm that reflects certain features of Hungarian culture,
the peoples recent politico-cultural experience, and more specifically, the
perception of Budapest in the rest of the country. The ability of the Budapest
political elite to set goals for the city, and to work jointly to make progress
towards their achievement is hampered by these deep politico-cultural
divisions. The prospects for Budapest at the beginning of the 21 st Century
are clearly linked to this issue. This book will conclude with some comments
20

on contemporary political culture in Budapest and some indications of what

the future may hold for this frequently ravaged, complex and fascinating
city.

21

1. The Historic Heart of Budapest: The

Castle District

For the visitors who arrive in Budapest by boat, or who after their arrival by
car or aeroplane, walk to the edge of the Danube, cannot fail to see the
historic heart of the metropolis: the Vrhegy or Castle Hill of Buda. From
the promenade on the Pest side they will see a flat-topped hill set back from
the opposite bank of the Danube rising one hundred and fifty metres above
its surrounds. Resting on top of the southern section of this flat hill is the
Baroque Royal Palace topped by a round dome. The Palace is low rather
than massive, ornamental rather than soaring. It does not dominate its site,
on the contrary the dimensions of the Palace blend with the contours of the
hill. It appears rather like an organic extension of the plateau on which it
rests. Looking towards the northern section of the Castle Hill the viewer sees
the ensemble of the neo-gothic spire of the Matthias Church and a long, lowslung extension of a building of unknown function, all apparently ringed by
the colonnades and towers of the Fishermens Bastion. The visitor is not to
know that the building of unknown function has no historic importance, and
is the cleverly inserted Budapest Hilton. The theatricality of this scene is
further enhanced by the gentle bend of the Danube River to the south and the
historic Chain Bridge arching above the river on its northern side.
The setting of Budapest has always been one of its main charms. Vienna,
Belgrade and Bratislava may be on the Danube, but one can sightsee in them
while ignoring the river. Budapest is bisected by the Danube and is defined
by its relationship with the river. The hills of Buda form a contrast with the
flat terrain of Pest, and the ordered largely four to six storey buildings there
create a very different picture to the villas and small apartment buildings in
the greenery on the slopes of the Buda hills. The panorama of the city and
the river forms a visual spectacle which is enhanced on summer evenings by
the floodlighting of the main bridges and the key buildings of the Buda
Castle Hill.
The urban district on top of Castle Hill is geographically and culturally
quite distinct from the rest of the city. This hill, about a kilometre and a half
22

long north-south and four hundred metres wide east-west, is even today like
a small town inside a big city. One needs to walk up a steep slope to get to it,
or catch a bus that winds its way up a narrow road to the top. Cars are
banned from the narrow, cobbled streets on the top. This is just as well,
because during the height of the tourist season the streets and squares around
its historic public buildings are thronged with visitors from all parts of the
world. To understand Budapest one has to know something about the history
of Buda Castle Hill.
There have been small farm houses with orchards, and vegetable gardens
on the lower slopes of Castle hill at least since Celtic times, though later the
Romans established their settlement 8km to the north on the banks of the
Danube and called it Aquincum. This was near another established
settlement at Obuda (Old Buda). There was also a small settlement on the
left bank of the river, on the Pest side. The Hungarian tribes settled in the
Carpathian Basin in 895-6 AD, but largely ignored the strategic value of the
Buda hill. The Tatar invasions of 1241 devastated Hungary, historians have
estimated that six out of ten settlements in the lowlands were destroyed. This
included Obuda and Pest. Also, much of the countrys farmland was laid
waste. About one third of the population perished through Tatar brutality or
starvation. King Bla IV (1235-1270) realised that the rebuilt towns and
villages would need fortifications to withstand any further Tatar incursions.
So in 1243 he ordered the building of fortifications around the top of Buda
Hill and moved people from what was left of the adjacent settlements to this
newly fortified site. Water was thought to be a problem at this isolated site,
but water seeping down through the limestone rock of the hill had dissolved
some of the subterranean rock to form a series of caves. Some of these have
collected water and so provided the growing township with fresh drinking
water. Not only the local Hungarian population came to settle in Buda,
settlers were also encouraged to come from the German-speaking lands,
some came from Nuremberg, the most important medieval commercial
centre in central Europe. There were also Jews and Serbs, and by the
beginning of the 14th century all this helped make Buda a thriving town of
merchants and craftsmen. The city traded with places as far apart as Cracow
in Poland, St Gallen in Switzerland and Frankfurt in Germany. Bla IV
ordered the building of a royal palace at the southern end of Castle Hill and
made it the seat of his royal court.
The second half of the 15th Century and the beginning of the 16th Century
was the golden age of feudal Buda. The royal court, the central government
bodies and the courts of law were there. As a result many of the higher
nobility and the senior clergy also lived in Buda. King Matthias I (14581490) rebuilt the royal palace in Renaissance style with splendid colonnades,
ornamental gardens and banquet rooms. He also invited many Italian
scholars and artists to his court to make Buda a centre of European culture.
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