"Pearl of the Danube" a Budapest Travel Page by nicolaitan

Budapest offers a wide array of attractions to the visitor. Soaring churches, stately museums, wide boulevards, excellent food and wine - we enjoyed our visit here. The downtown lacks the quaint winding cobblestoned paths of some cities, but makes up by the easy and often free access to major sites (unlike some cities). Prices are reasonable and service seems accomodating.

Two items that made our visit to Budapest particularly enjoyable -
1- despite the weakness of the dollar, we found prices relatively reasonable for everything.
2- the city was very "manageable" for the independent traveller. Between the transit system and walking, everything was easily and conveniently reached.

The history of Budapest is a recurring cycle of development, prosperity, and destruction. First, Celtic tribes first created a town at this site hundreds of years BC. The Roman legions conquered the area in 35 BC, setting up their own center at Aquincum, only to be ousted in the early 5th Century by the Goths and then Huns. Between 896 and 900, a fierce nomadic tribe from the western Russia area called Magyars conquered the region led by the legendary Arpad, founder of a dynasty which would last 400+ years. King Geza and particularly King Stephen adopted western customs and led in the conversion of the Magyars to Christianity. Stephen was coronated on Christmas Day 1000 with a crown sent by the pope. In 1222 the Hungarian nation is created by the signing of the "Golden Bull" granting rights and obligations to the nobles and royalty. Buda became the capitol. The Mongol hordes destroyed the region in 1241, but left soon afterward. King Bela then began extensive construction of the region as defense for the future. Under the reign of King Matthius in the late 15th Century, Hungary became a leading European power. With his Italian wife Beatrice, Obuda, Buda, and Pest became centers of culture and learning as well as an economic and military power.

The Turks under Suleiman conquered this area between 1526 and 1541, leading to a long 150 year period of decline and decay. In 1686, after a destructive 1 1/2 month siege left the cities wiped out, the Hapsburgs drove the Ottoman Empire from the area and became the new military rulers. After some decades of repression, the Hapsburgs recognized the potential military and economic benefits of this important Danube site and begain to rebuild the area. Pest became a wealthy city, attracting immigrants including Jews and Serbs, even as Austrian rule remained autocratic. Periodic bloody revolutions led to the 1867 equalization of Austria and Hungary with extensive reforms in the Great Compromise, creating the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As the millenium of the Magyar invasion approached, great construction and growth marked another Golden Era. Obuda, Buda, and Pest were united as one city in 1873. Economics and culture exploded. WWI ended with the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Budapest was unscathed but Hungary lost much of its land volume and populace.

WWII left Budapest the devastated capitol of a small country. After the first war, Regent Miklos Horthy affiliated with the Nazis and supplied military forces in return for receiving lands lost in the WWI settlement. Near the end of the war, when Hungary tried to back out of its association, Germany took over with their right wing Arrow Cross party, which among other dubious accomplishments, managed to transport as many as 560000 Jews to the extermination camps in Poland. At the end of the war, the Germans destroyed the city and its bridges in front of the Allied advances.

Reconstruction began under the Communist period which began in 1948. Their construction was functional and shoddy, leading to shabby apartment blocks and business buildings with poor architectural planning and design. The same stultifying atmosphere submerged the Hungarian spirit, leading to Revolution. In 1956, Imre Nagy led a short-lived Revolution crushed by the Russian armies. But in the years leading up to Oct 23 1989, increasing demand for reforms led to the creation of an independent democratic Republic of Hungary. The years since have seen a renaissance in Budapest as a major economic and cultural centre.