Budapest looks its most beautiful at dawn. As the sun slowly rises over
the eastern plains, bathing Pest in soft pastel hues, it radiates back
from the buildings of Buda as if they were a giant mirror; the windows
on Castle Hill positively glisten in golden jubilation.
But Budapest is also spectacularly appealing at night. The Chain Bridge
is festooned with white lights, and the main public buildings like the
Parliament, the Opera and the Royal Palace, as well as the entire
panorama of the Castle District, are imaginatively and sensitively
floodlit.
It's easy for Budapest to play with light in the manner of an elegant
lady trying on her jewels, for everything looks good. This is a vibrant
city: it throbs with life morning, noon and night; visitors arriving
from other countries get the feeling that something interesting is
happening round every corner.
There are plenty of other capital cities built on the banks of a river,
and in many cases the river runs through the historic centre. But such a
wide and majestic river, as is the Danube at Budapest, is more of a
rarity. Even more exceptional is the perfect contrast between the right
and left banks. Buda is built upon hills, the feet of two of them - Castle Hill and Gellért Hill
- almost stand in the water. Facing it is
Pest, as flat as a pancake (or, as a Hungarian might say, as flat as a
"lángos", a pita-type bread popular for many a century).
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picture gallery
It's no exaggeration to say that Budapest is one of the finest capital
cities in Europe, and also one of the best situated. Among the several
places in Hungary that have been afforded the classification of UNESCO
World Heritage Site, the first were the Danube panorama (on the Buda
side from the Gellért Hotel all along Castle Hill to Margaret Bridge,
and on the Pest side from the Parliament back down to Petőfi Bridge),
and Andrássy út (along its entire length from the centre of Pest to
Heroes Square, where the Millenary Monument stands on the edge of the
City Park).
At the time of the Magyar Conquest in 896, the first Hungarian tribes
settled in the plains to the east. They migrated to the hills further
west later on to take advantage of the greater protection they offered.
Buda became the royal seat in the thirteenth century and saw the court's
rising status reflected in the building of ever more splendid palaces
and the expansion of the town into a flowering middle class town. Pest
at this time was a town of merchants and artisans.
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picture gallery
In the history of Budapest the year 1872 stands out as a milestone, for
it was then that the three separate settlements of Pest, Buda and Óbuda
(literally "Old" Buda) were united. Budapest officially became the
capital city of Hungary, and underwent rapid growth in size and
eminence. This was the city's golden age, and coincided with the
Hungarian millennial celebrations in 1896.
Budapest, now home to two million inhabitants, would appear countless
times on any list of superlatives. The Continent's first underground
railway was built here. From here originated more pioneering Hollywood
film makers than from any other European city. Budapest was the home of
such world class inventors as Kálmán Kandó, the father of electric
railways, and János Irinyi, one of the early developers of matches.
Hungary's two most celebrated composers - Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály
- lived in Budapest, and Nobel Prize-winning Hungarian author Imre
Kertész was born here.
Hungary's oldest academic library, the University Library, is to be
found here. It is the location of Europe's largest synagogue. It is the
only capital city in the world where there are more than one hundred hot
thermal springs. There are no other cities of comparable size anywhere
where visitors can explore dripstone (stalactite) caves in the middle of
the residential districts.
It would be difficult to find another city where visitors are faced with
such a choice of transport: bus, tram, trolleybus, train, underground
railway, cogwheel railway, funicular, forest railway, horse-and-trap,
chair-lift, boat, bicycle and on Margaret Island "bringóhintó" family
cycle cars - Budapest has them all! Let's choose one, and set off in the
World Heritage streets.
Later we'll go a little further, to see more unique and interesting
things, as we visit some of the historical towns and beautiful
countryside that lie just outside the capital.
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picture gallery
