Deszo Paloczi – Elisabeth Toth-
Gabor Janosi –
Anna Szarbo - Donald Sr. Vandegrift
– Anne Karkas
BUDAPEST
The first settlement on the
territory of Budapest was built by Celts before 1 AD. It was later occupied by
the Romans. The Roman settlement - Aquincum - became the main city of Lower
Pannonia in 106 AD. The Romans constructed roads, amphitheaters, baths and
houses with heated floors in this fortified military camp.
The peace treaty of 829 added
Pannonia to Bulgaria due to the victory of Bulgarian army of Omurtag over Holy
Roman Empire of Louis the Pious. Budapest arose out of two Bulgarian military
frontier fortresses Buda and Pest, situated on the two banks of Danube.
Hungarians led by Árpád settled in the territory at the end of the 9th century,
and a century later officially founded the Kingdom of Hungary. Research places
the probable residence of the Árpáds as an early place of central power near
what became Budapest. The Tatar invasion in the 13th century quickly proved
that defence is difficult on a plain. King Béla IV of Hungary therefore ordered
the construction of reinforced stone walls around the towns and set his own
royal palace on the top of the protecting hills of Buda. In 1361 it became the
capital of Hungary.
The cultural role of Buda was particularly
significant during the reign of Matthias Corvinus of Hungary. The Italian
Renaissance had a great influence on the city. His library, the Bibliotheca
Corviniana, was Europe's greatest collection of historical chronicles and
philosophic and scientific works in the 15th century, and second only in size
to the Vatican Library. After the foundation of the first Hungarian university
in Pécs in 1367, the second one was established in Óbuda in 1395. The first
Hungarian book was printed in Buda in 1473. Buda had about 5,000 inhabitants
around 1500.
During the Hungarian Republic of
Councils in 1919, the Heroes' Square was completely covered by red textile and
a statue of Marx was erected.
The Ottomans pillaged Buda in 1526,
besieged it in 1529, and finally occupied it in 1541. The Turkish occupation
lasted for more than 140 years. The Turks constructed many fine bathing
facilities within the city. Under Ottoman rule many Christians became Muslim.
By 1547 the number of Christians was down to about a thousand, and by 1647 it
had fallen to only about seventy. The unoccupied western part of the country
became part of the Habsburg Empire as Royal Hungary.
In 1686, two years after the
unsuccessful siege of Buda, a renewed campaign was started to enter the Hungarian
capital. This time, the Holy League's army was twice as large, containing 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, artilleryman, and officers, the Christian forces
reconquered Buda, and in the next few years, all of the former Hungarian lands,
except areas near Timişoara (Temesvár), were taken from the Turks. In the 1699
Treaty of Karlowitz these territorial changes were officially recognized, and
in 1718 the entire Kingdom of Hungary was removed from Ottoman rule.
The city was destroyed during the
battle. Hungary was then incorporated into the Habsburg Empire.
The 19th century was dominated by
the Hungarian struggle for independence and modernization. The national
insurrection against the Habsburgs began in the Hungarian capital in 1848 and
was defeated a little more than a year later.
This made Budapest the twin capital
of a dual monarchy. It was this compromise which opened the second great phase
of development in the history of Budapest, lasting until World War I. In 1873
Buda and Pest were officially merged with the third part, Óbuda (Ancient Buda),
thus creating the new metropolis of Budapest. The dynamic Pest grew into the
country's administrative, political, economic, trade and cultural hub. Budapest
went from about 80% German-speaking in 1848 to about 80% Hungarian-speaking in
1880. The capital, Budapest, was 23% Jewish. Due to the prosperity and the
large Jewish community of the city, Budapest was often called the "Jewish
Mecca" World War I brought the Golden Age to an end. In 1918
Austria-Hungary lost the war and collapsed; Hungary declared itself an
independent republic. In 1920 the Treaty of Trianon finalized the country's
partition, as a result, Hungary lost over two-thirds of its territory, about
two-thirds of its inhabitants under the treaty including 3.3 million out of 10
million ethnic Hungarians.
In 1944, towards the end of World
War II, Budapest was partly destroyed by British and American air raids. From
24 December 1944 to 13 February 1945, the city was besieged during the Battle
of Budapest. Budapest suffered major damage caused by the attacking Soviet and
Romanian troops and the defending German and Hungarian troops. All bridges were
destroyed by the Germans. More than 38,000 civilians lost their lives during
the conflict.
Between 20% and 40% of Greater
Budapest's 250,000 Jewish inhabitants died through Nazi and Arrow Cross Party
genocide during 1944 and early 1945. Despite this, modern day Budapest has the
highest number of Jewish citizens per capita of any European city. The Swedish
diplomat Raoul Wallenberg managed to save the lives of tens of thousands of
Jews in Budapest by giving them Swedish passports and taking them under his
consular protection.
In 1949, Hungary was declared a
communist People's Republic. The new Communist government considered the
buildings like the Buda Castle symbols of the former regime, and during the
1950s the palace was gutted and all the interiors were destroyed.
In 1956, peaceful demonstrations in Budapest
led to the outbreak of the Hungarian Revolution. The Leadership collapsed after
mass demonstrations began on 23 October, but Soviet tanks entered Budapest to
crush the revolt. Fighting continued until early November, leaving more than
3000 dead.
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 finally
repaired. Work on Erzsébet Bridge, the last to be rebuilt, was finished in 1965.
In the early 1970s, Budapest Metro's East-West M2 line was first opened,
followed by the M3 line in 1982. In 1987, Buda Castle and the banks of the
Danube were included in the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. Andrassy
Avenue (including the Millennium Underground Railway, Hősök tere and
Városliget) was added to the UNESCO list in 2002. In the 1980s the city's
population reached 2.1 million. In recent times a significant decrease in
population occurred mainly due to a massive movement to the neighbouring
agglomeration in Pest county. In the last decades of the 20th century the
political changes of 1989-90 concealed changes in civil society and along the
streets of Budapest. The monuments of the dictatorship were taken down from
public places, into Memento Park. In the first 20 years of the new democracy
the development of the city was managed by Gábor Demszky.
Alain Laprise Sept. 25, 2013
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