Óbuda, Pest, and Buda – Part 1
The beginnings of Budapest.
Budapest, both a city and municipality, is Hungary’s capital and most populous city. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube River (with Vienna coming first).
The Celts built the first settlement on the territory of Budapest before 1 AD/CE. It was later occupied by the Romans. A military settlement at first, Aquincum—where Marcus Aurelius wrote part of his Meditations—became the main city of Pannonia Inferior/Lower Pannonia in 106 CE and a focal point of commercial life. Today, this area corresponds to the Óbuda (Old Buda in Hungarian) district within Budapest, and the city of Aquincum is one of the best-conserved Roman sites in Hungary.
Pest was also originally founded as a Celtic settlement, then a fortified camp established by the Romans across the river from their military border camp at Aquincum (Contra-Aquincum). During the Middle Ages, Pest was an independent city separate from Buda and was an important economic center during the 11th–13th centuries. It was destroyed in the 1241 Mongol invasion of Hungary but was rebuilt shortly after.
The Magyar tribes led by Árpád, Grand Prince of the Hungarians, forced out of their original homeland north of Bulgaria by Tsar Simeon after the Battle of Southern Buh, settled in the territory at the end of the 9th century, displacing the founding Bulgarian settlers of the towns of Buda and Pest, and a century later officially founded the Kingdom of Hungary. The Tatar invasion of the 13th century had already proved that it was hard to defend a plain. Therefore, King Béla IV of Hungary ordered the construction of reinforced stone walls around the towns and set his royal palace on the top of the protecting hills of Buda in 1247. In 1361, Buda became the capital of Hungary.
The cultural role of Buda was particularly significant during the reign of King Matthias Corvinus. The Italian Renaissance had a great influence on the city. The Bibliotheca Corviniana was Europe’s most extensive collection of historical chronicles, philosophy, and scientific works in the 15th century, second only in size to the Vatican Library. After the foundation of the first Hungarian university in Pécs in 1367 (the University of Pécs), the second one was established in Óbuda in 1395 (the University of Óbuda). The first Hungarian book was printed in Buda in 1473. The city had about 5,000 inhabitants around the year 1500.
The Ottoman Empire in Budapest
The Ottomans conquered Buda in 1526, as well as in 1529, and finally occupied it in 1541. The Ottoman Rule lasted for more than 150 years. By 1547, the number of Christians had declined to approximately 1,000, and by 1647, it had dropped to around 70. The western part of the country, which was previously unoccupied, became part of the Habsburg monarchy as Royal Hungary.
In May 1684, an army of 38,000–43,000 men marched under Charles V, Duke of Lorraine, to capture the city of Buda from the Turks. The main army crossed the Danube River at the town of Esztergom on June 13, and the front of the imperial army under the command of Maximilian Lorenz Starhemberg and cavalry Gen. Louis William, Margrave of Baden-Baden, arrived at the castle town of Visegrád on June 15. On June 16, the imperial troops took Esztergom. On June 27, the imperial army met strong Turkish forces of 17,000 men near the city of Vác, under the command of Grand Vizier Bayburtlu Kara Ibrahim Pasha, but managed to capture Vác on the same day.
After the imperial forces crossed the Danube River at Vác, they began the siege of Buda (defended by approximately 7,000 Turks) on July 14. Field Marshal Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg was assigned to conduct the siege. On July 19, the forces took control of the lower part of the town of Buda. They attempted several attacks on the fortress during July and August, but the Turks repelled all. At the beginning of September, an imperial general reported that the number of soldiers fit for service had shrunk to 12,500, and morale was low. On September 11, an imperial auxiliary corps reached Buda, providing new momentum to the campaign. On September 22, a Turkish relief army arrived and launched an attack against the besieging forces. The imperial military managed to repel them but was unable to defeat them.
The Turkish relief army engaged the imperial troops in repeated nuisance attacks, which, coupled with losses caused by the Turkish city garrison, caused, yet again, another plunge in morale. Starhemberg, who was severely wounded and facing sustained criticism from his army, had to be replaced. The final blow was a spell of poor weather conditions throughout October, and the decision was made to withdraw on October 30th, after a siege that had lasted 109 days.
In 1686, two years after the unsuccessful siege, a renewed campaign advanced to Buda. This time, the Holy League‘s army was twice as large, comprising over 74,000 men, including German, Croat, Dutch, Hungarian, English, Spanish, Czech, Italian, French, Burgundian, Danish, and Swedish soldiers, along with other Europeans as volunteers, artillerymen, and officers. The Christian forces seized Buda, and in the next few years, all of the former Hungarian lands, except areas near Temesvár (Timișoara), were taken from the Turks. The 1699 Treaty of Karlowitz officially recognized these territorial changes, and in 1718, the entire Kingdom of Hungary was removed from Ottoman rule.
Contemporary History
The national insurrection against the Habsburgs began in the Hungarian capital in 1848 and was defeated one and a half years later with the help of the Russian Empire. 1867 was the year of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise, which led to the formation of Austria-Hungary and made Budapest the twin capital of a dual monarchy. The compromise ended the 18-year-long military dictatorship and absolutist rule over Hungary, which Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria had instituted after the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. The territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Hungary was restored. Hungarian political leaders had two goals during negotiations: One was to regain the traditional legal and political status of the Hungarian state, and the other was to restore a series of reform laws (the so-called April Laws) of the revolutionary parliament of 1848, based on 12 points that established modern civil and political rights, and economic, and societal reforms.
In 1849, the Széchenyi Chain Bridge linking Buda with Pest became the first permanent bridge across the Danube, and in 1873, Buda and Pest were officially merged with the third part, Óbuda, thus creating the new metropolis of Budapest. The dynamic Pest grew into the country’s administrative, political, economic, trade, and cultural hub. Ethnic Hungarians surpassed the Germans in the second half of the 19th century due to mass migration from the overpopulated rural regions of Transdanubia and the Great Hungarian Plain. Between 1851 and 1910, the Hungarian population increased from 35.6% to 85.9%, Hungarian became the dominant language, and German was crowded out. The Jewish community peaked at 23.6% in the 1900s and prospered in the city at the beginning of the 20th century. Budapest also became an important center for the Aromanian diaspora during the 19th century.
On July 28, 1914, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Within days, long-standing mobilization plans went into effect to initiate invasions or guard against them, and Russia, France, and Britain stood arrayed against Austria and Germany in what at the time was called the Great War (World War I). In 1918, Austria-Hungary lost the war and collapsed; Hungary declared itself an independent republic. In 1920, the Treaty of Trianon partitioned the country. As a result, Hungary lost over two-thirds of its territory and about two-thirds of its inhabitants, including 3.3 million out of 15 million ethnic Hungarians.
In 1944, a year before the end of World War II, Budapest was partly destroyed by British and American air raids. The Siege of Budapest (from December 24, 1944, to February 13, 1945) was the 50-day-long encirclement by Soviet and Romanian forces of the Hungarian capital. During the siege, about 38,000 civilians died from starvation, military action, and mass executions of Jews by the far-right Hungarian nationalist Arrow Cross party. The Germans destroyed all five bridges (at the time). The city unconditionally surrendered on February 13, 1945.
Following the capture of Hungary from Nazi Germany by the Red Army, Soviet military occupation ensued, which ended only in 1991. The Soviets exerted significant influence on Hungarian political affairs. In 1949, Hungary was declared a communist People’s Republic. On October 23, 1956, citizens held a big peaceful demonstration demanding democratic reform. The demonstrators went to the Budapest radio station and demanded that their demands be published. The regime ordered troops to shoot into the crowd. Hungarian soldiers gave rifles to the demonstrators, who were then able to capture the building. The communist politician Imre Nagy became Prime Minister on October 24, as a central demand of the revolutionaries and the general public.
The Liberty Statue is a Soviet-installed statue complex that was first erected in 1947 in remembrance of the Soviet liberation of Hungary from Nazi forces. Originally known as the Liberation Monument, the central piece depicts a female figure holding a palm leaf aloft and gazing toward the east, in the direction of the Soviet Union. The 14 m/46 ft tall bronze statue, which is supposed to represent Liberty, stands atop a 26 m/85 ft pedestal. The inscription on it originally read: “To the memory of the liberating Soviet heroes [erected by] the grateful Hungarian people [in] 1945.”
Views from Gellért Hill
Nagy’s reformist faction gained full government control, admitted non-communist politicians, dissolved the ÁVH secret police, promised democratic reforms, and unilaterally withdrew Hungary from the Warsaw Pact on November 1. The Soviet Union launched a massive military invasion of Hungary on November 4, forcibly deposing Nagy, who fled to the Embassy of Yugoslavia in Budapest. He was lured out of the embassy under false promises on November 22, was arrested, and deported to Romania. On June 16, 1958, Nagy was tried and executed for treason alongside his closest allies, and he was buried in an unmarked grave.
They were eventually rehabilitated in June 1989 and reburied with full honors, an event that played a key role in the collapse of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (MSZMP) regime. On October 7, 1989, the MSZMP was dissolved and refounded as the Hungarian Socialist Party, a Western-style social democratic party. Two weeks later, the National Assembly approved numerous amendments to the constitution that purged it of its Marxist–Leninist character, ending one-party rule in Hungary. The first free parliamentary elections were held in May 1990, and between March 12, 1990, and June 19, 1991, all Soviet troops (the Southern Group of Forces) left Hungary.
Heroes Square
Hősök tere, or Heroes’ Square, is one of the major squares in Budapest, noted for its iconic Millennium Monument featuring a left and a right colonnade with statues, a 36 m/118 ft Corinthian column, and a pedestal with the Seven Chieftains of the Magyars (the leaders of the seven tribes of the Hungarians at the time of their arrival in the Carpathian Basin in 895 CE).
Constantine VII, Emperor of the Byzantine Empire, names the seven tribes in his De Administrando Imperio, but the identities of the chieftains are not precisely known. Constantine VII doesn’t name them, and different chronicles include contradictory lists, some of which are false. The relations between them are also the subject of debate among historians. In any case, the statues by sculptor György Zala are supposed to depict (from left to right) Teteny, Ond, Kond, Árpád (middle), Elöd, Huba, and Tas, with costumes and horses not entirely historically accurate! The top of the column depicts Archangel Gabriel holding the Hungarian Holy Crown and the Apostolic Double Cross.
At the front of the Millennium monument is the Memorial Stone of Heroes (Hősök emlékköve), a large stone cenotaph surrounded by an ornamental iron chain. The cenotaph is dedicated “To the memory of the heroes who gave their lives for the freedom of our people and our national independence.” While some guidebooks refer to it as a tomb, it is not a burial place, but is erroneously called the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The memorial is surrounded by a fence and is off-limits to visitors. The Ministry of Defence only opens the gate for official state ceremonies.
Behind the cenotaph, but within the decorative chain, is a flat bronze plate that marks the site of an artesian well, whose drilling was completed in 1878 by Hungarian mining engineer and member of parliament, Vilmos Zsigmondy. The well supplies water to the Széchenyi Thermal Bath, located behind the monument and the Dagály Thermal Bath. It reaches a depth of 971 m/3,185 ft and produces 831 l/219 gal of hot water per minute at 74 ºC/165 °F.
The square has played a significant role in contemporary Hungarian history and has hosted numerous political events, including the reburial of Imre Nagy in 1989. Most sculptures are by György Zala, and one by György Vastagh.
The rear perspective of the colonnades. Statues of War and Peace stand facing each other.- Behind War’s chariot, the statues of Work & Prosperity can be seen on the other end of the left colonnade.
City Park, Vajdahunyad Castle
Right behind Heroes’ Square, in an area of 1.2 km²/302 ac, lies Budapest’s City Park. The area, formerly known as Ökör-dűlő, meaning “ox-meadow,” was renamed Batthyány-erdő (Batthyány Forest) around 1800, after its tenants, the Batthyány family. The first planned walkways appeared in 1751, and the public park was established in the early 19th century. It is said to be one of the world’s first public parks. Its main entrance is located on Heroes’ Square, with the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts on the left and the Hall of Art on the right, on Dózsa György Road.
From the 1960s to the late 1980s, Hungary was often satirically referred to as “the happiest barrack” within the Eastern Bloc, and much of the wartime damage to the city was repaired. Works on the Erzsébet/Elisabeth Bridge, the last to be rebuilt, finished in 1964. In the early 1970s, Budapest’s Metro east-west M2 line opened, followed by the M3 line in 1976. In 1987, Buda Castle and the banks of the Danube were added to the UNESCO World Heritage list. (Andrássy Avenue, including the Millennium Underground Railway/Metro Line M1, Heroes’ Square, and the City Park, were added to the UNESCO list in 2002). In the 1980s, the city population reached 2.1 million.
Sources: wikipedia / themomentus.com / equestrianstatue.org
Images by Athina D. Pantazatou for Kicking Back the Pebbles
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