The Rough Guide to Hungary
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The Rough Guide to Hungary

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eBook - ePub

The Rough Guide to Hungary

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About This Book

The Rough Guide to Hungary is the definitive guide to this beautiful land-locked nation, with clear maps and detailed coverage of all the best attractions from the thickly forested Northern Uplands and The Great Plain to the spectacular Lake Balaton and hip capital city, Budapest. You'll find introductory sections on Hungarian customs, health, food, drink and outdoor activities as well as Hungarian wine and extraordinary concentration of thermal bars, all inspired by dozens of colour photos. The Rough Guide to Hungary is loaded with practical information on getting there and around, plus reviews of the best hotels, restaurants, bars and shopping in Hungary for all budgets. Rely on expert background information on everything from Hungarian folk music to Habsburg rule whilst relying on a useful language section and the clearest maps of any guide.

Make the most of your holiday with The Rough Guide to Hungary

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Publisher
Rough Guides
ISBN
9781405387156

Explore Hungary

Budapest – Part 1 >

Budapest – Part 2 >

The Danube Bend >

Lake Balaton and the Bakony >

Transdanubia – Part 1 >

Transdanubia – Part 2 >

The Northern Uplands >

The Great Plain >

Budapest – Part 1

The importance of BUDAPEST to Hungary is difficult to overestimate. More than two million people live in the capital – one fifth of the population – and everything converges here: roads and rail lines; air travel; industry, commerce and culture; opportunities, wealth and power. Like Paris, the city has a history of revolutions – in 1849, 1918 and 1956 – buildings, parks and avenues on a monumental scale, and a reputation for hedonism, style and parochial pride. In short, Budapest is a city worthy of comparison with other great European capitals.
Surveying Budapest from the embankments or the bastions of Várhegy (Castle Hill), it’s easy to see why the city was dubbed the “Pearl of the Danube”. Its grand buildings and sweeping bridges look magnificent, especially when floodlit or illuminated by the barrage of fireworks that explode above the Danube every August 20, St Stephen’s Day. The eclectic inner-city and radial boulevards combine brash commercialism with a fin-de-siècle sophistication, while a distinctively Magyar character is highlighted by the sounds and appearance of the Hungarian language at every turn.
Since the end of Communism, Budapest has experienced a new surge of dynamism. Luxury hotels and malls, restaurants, bars and clubs have all proliferated – as have crime and social inequalities. Though many Hungarians fear the erosion of their culture by foreign influences, others see a new golden age for Budapest, as the foremost world-city of Mitteleuropa.
The River Danube – which is never blue – determines basic orientation, with Buda on the hilly west bank and Pest covering the plain across the river. More precisely, Budapest is divided into 23 districts (kerület), designated on maps and street signs by Roman numerals; many quarters also have a historic name. Pest is where you’re likely to spend most of your time, enjoying the streetlife, bars and shops within the Belváros (Inner City), and museums and monuments in the surrounding Lipótváros (likewise part of the V district), Terézváros (VI), Erzsébetváros (VII), Józsefváros (VIII) and Ferencváros (IX), demarcated by two semicircular boulevards – the Kiskörút (Small Boulevard) and the Nagykörút (Great Boulevard) – and radial avenues such as Andrássy út. Across the river in Buda, the focus of attention is the I district, comprising Várhegy and the Víziváros (Watertown); the XI, XII, II and III districts are worth visiting for Gellért-hegy, the Buda Hills, Óbuda and Rómaifürdő.
Highlights >
Some history >
Arrival and information >
City transport >
Accommodation >
Pest >
Vörösmarty tér >
Váci utca >
Szervita tér to Ferenciek tere >
Along the embankment >
Deák tér and Erzsébet tér >
Lipótváros and beyond >
Roosevelt tér >
St Stephen’s Basilica and Bajcsy-Zsilinszky út >
Szabadság tér >
The Bedő House and Post Office Savings Bank >
From the Glass House to Vértanuk tér >
Kossuth tér >
Further out >
Terézváros >
Hősök tere and around >
The Városliget >
Erzsébetváros >
Józsefváros >
Ferencváros >

Highlights

Hungarian Railway History Park The chance to ride and even drive a steam train is a big draw for all ages.
Zoo The Art Nouveau animal houses and the chance to feed the camels and giraffes make this a very special zoo.
Jewish quarter Explore the atmospheric neighbourhood behind the Dohány utca Synagogue, the focal point of Budapest’s Jewish community.
Várhegy Laden with bastions, mansions and a huge palace, Castle Hill preserves many medieval features, and a Cold War nuclear bunker.
Turkish baths Experience unrivalled atmosphere and luxury in an original Ottoman bathhouse.
Coffee shops This venerable Central European institution is alive and well in the streets of Pest.
Sziget Festival Frenetic open-air rock and pop festival held in August.
Folk music The swirling tunes of Hungarian folk music are brought to life in the city’s folk clubs.
Music Academy A magnificent showcase for some of the best classical music in the country.
< Back to Budapest – Part 1
Some history
Though Budapest has formally existed only since 1873 – when the twin cities of Buda and Pest were united in a single municipality, together with the smaller Óbuda – the history of settlement here goes back as far as the second millennium BC. During the first Age of Migrations, the area was settled by waves of peoples, notably Scythians from the Caucasus and Celts from what is now France.
During the first century BC, the Celtic Eravisci tribe was absorbed into Pannonia, a vast province of the Roman Empire. This was subsequently divided into two regions, one of which, Pannonia Inferior, was governed from the garrison town of Aquincum on the west bank of the Danube; ruins of a camp, villas, baths and an amphitheatre can still be seen today.
The Romans withdrew in the fifth century AD to be succeeded by the Huns. Germanic tribes, Lombards, Avars and Slavs all followed each other during the second Age of Migrations, until the arrival of the Magyars in about 896. According to the medieval chronicler, Anonymous, while other tribes spread out across the Carpathian basin, the clan of Árpád settled on Csepel-sziget (Csepel Island), and it was Árpád’s brother, Buda, who purportedly gave his name to the west bank of the new settlement. It was under the Árpád dynasty that Hungary became a Christian state, ruled first from Esztergom and later from Székesfehérvár.
The development of Buda and Pest did not begin in earnest until the twelfth century, and was largely thanks to French, Walloon and German settlers who worked and traded here under royal protection. Both towns were devastated by the Mongols in 1241 and subsequently rebuilt by colonists from Germany, who named Buda “Ofen”, after its numerous limekilns. (The name Pest, which is of Slav origin, also means “oven”.) During the fourteenth century, the Angevin kings from France established Buda as a royal seat, building a succession of palaces on Várhegy. It reached its apogee in Renaissance times under the reign of “Good King” Mátyás (1458–90) and his Italian-born wife, Queen Beatrice, with a golden age of prosperity and a flourishing of the arts.
Hungary’s catastrophic defeat at Mohács in 1526 paved the way for the Turkish occupation of Buda and Pest, which lasted 160 years until a pan-European army besieged Buda Castle for six weeks, finally recapturing it at the twelfth attempt. Under Habsburg rule, with control exerted from Vienna or Bratislava, recovery was followed by a period of intensive growth during the second half of the eighteenth century. In the first decades of the following century, Pest became the centre of the Reform movement led by Count Széchenyi, whose vision of progress was embodied in the construction of the Chain Bridge (Lánchíd), the first permanent link between Buda and Pest, which had hitherto relied on pontoon bridges or barges.
When the Habsburg Empire was shaken by revolutions which broke out across Europe in March 1848, local reformists and radicals seized the moment. While Lajos Kossuth (1802–94) dominated Parliament, Sándor Petőfi (1823–49) and his fellow revolutionaries plotted the downfall of the Habsburgs in the Café Pilvax (which exists today in a sanitized restaurant form in central Pest), from where they mobilized crowds on the streets of Pest. After the War of Independence ended in defeat for the Hungarians, Habsburg repression was epitomized by the hilltop Citadella on Gellért-hegy, built to cow the citizenry with its guns.
Following the Compromise of 1867, which established the Dual Monarchy familiarly known to its subjects as the K & K (from the German for “Emperor and King”), the twin cities underwent rapid expansion and formally merged. Pest was extensively remodelled, acquiring the Nagykörút (Great Boulevard) and Andrássy út, the grand thoroughfare that runs from the Belváros to the Városliget (City Park). Hungary’s millennial anniversary celebrations in 1896 brought a fresh rush of construction, and Hősök tere (Heroes’ Square) and Vajdahunyad Castle at the far end of Andrássy út are just two examples of the monumental style that encapsulated the age. New suburbs were created to house the burgeoning population, which was by now predominantly Magyar, although there were still large German and Jewish communities. At the beginning of the twentieth century the cultural efflorescence in Budapest rivalled that of Vienna and its café society that of Paris – a belle époque doomed by World War I.
In the aftermath of defeat, Budapest experienced the Soviet-ruled Republic of Councils under Béla Kun, and occupation by the Romanian army. The status quo ante was restored by Admiral Horthy, self-appointed regent for the exiled Karl IV – the “Admiral without a fleet, for the king without a kingdom” – whose regency was characterized by gala balls and hunger marches, bombastic nationalism and anti-Semitism. Yet Horthy was a moderate compared to the Arrow Cross Fascists, whose power grew as World War II raged.
Anticipating Horthy’s defection from the Axis in 1944, Nazi Germany staged a coup, installing an Arrow Cross government, which enabled them to begin the massacre of the Jews of Budapest; they also blew up the Danube bridges as a way of hampering the advance of the Red Army. The seven-week-long siege of Budapest reduced Várhegy to rubble and severely damaged much of the rest of the city, making reconstruction the first priority for the postwar coalition government.
As the Communists gained ascendancy, the former Arrow Cross torture chambers filled up once again. A huge statue of the Soviet dictator (whose name was bestowed upon Budapest’s premier boulevard) symbolized the reign of terror carried out by Mátyás Rákosi, Hungary’s “Little Stalin”. However, his liberally inclined successor, Imre Nagy, gave hope to the people, who refused to tolerate a comeback by the hardliners in 1956. In Budapest, peaceful protests turned into a citywide uprising literally overnight: men, women and children defying Soviet tanks on the streets.
After Soviet power had been bloodily restored, János Kádár – initially reviled as a quisling – gradually normalized conditions, embarking on cautious reforms to create a “goulash socialism” that made Hungary the envy of its Warsaw Pact neighbours and the West’s favourite Communist state during the late 1970s. A decade later, the regime saw the writing on the wall and anticipated Gorbachev by promising free elections, hoping to reap public gratitude. Instead – as Communism was toppled in Berlin and Prague – the party was simply voted out of power in Hungary.
While governments have come and gone since the historic election of 1990, Budapest’s administration has remained in the hands of Mayor Gábor Demszky, who is on his fifth term in office at the time of writing. Despite allegations of corruption, he is widely acknowledged to have steered the city forwards without any major upsets, and secured state funding for a fourth metro line, running from Keleti Station in Pest to Étele tér in Buda. Scheduled for completion in 2012 but already over time and budget, its construction seems likely to be the headstone of his career as mayor of one of the great cities of Europe.
< Back to Budapest – Part 1

Arrival and information

Other than the airport, all points of arrival are fairly central and most within walking distance or just a few stops by metro from downtown Pest. The city’s three metro lines and three main roads meet at the major junction of Deák tér in Pest, making this the main transport hub of the city. Depending on when and where you arrive, it’s definitely worth considering either arranging somewhere to stay before leaving the terminal or station (there are reservati...

Table of contents