Travel Hungary
Fisherman’s Bastion was built between 1895 and 1902 to celebrate Hungary’s 1,000th anniversary.
Best of Budapest
Grand delights and little discoveries abound in Hungary’s capital By Tim Johnson
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58 I N S I G H T January 14 – 20, 2022
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Once dilapidated, these spaces have become a staple of Budapest’s nightlife. That includes the Szechenyi Baths, where builders drilled the first thermal hot springs back in the 1870s. In 1896, Hungary celebrated its 1000th birthday and held a national exhibition, building a number of installations like the monument on Hero’s Square, and plans for a more elegant home for the baths started to take shape. By 1909, construction began on the palace walls, designed by Gyozo Czigler, an architect at Budapest Technical University whose imprint remains on other important spots in the city. Named for Count Istvan
FROM LEFT: V_E/SHUTTERSTOCK, SHUTTERSTOCK, THE EPOCH TIMES, UNGVARI ATTILA/SHUTTERSTOCK, MISTERVLAD/SHUTTERSTOCK
udapest is full of surprises. With grand buildings rising on both sides of the Danube River and connected by a series of soaring bridges, it is undeniably one of Europe’s most dramatic capitals. The riverbanks are preserved as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it is a place where you could spend days just marveling at the Danube, walking up to the heights of Fisherman’s Bastion on the Buda side, and just taking in the sweep of things. Until 1873, there were two separate cities— Buda, on one side, and Pest (pronounced “pesht”) on the other. Once united, it became a power center in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a twin royal capital with Vienna. The legacy remains in its architecture, handsome and impressive buildings like the National Opera House, St. Stephen’s Basilica, and the Neo-Gothic Hungarian Parliament Building (which, lit up dramatically at night, is featured in almost every tourist brochure for
the city). Now restored to their original glory, no longer diminished by the difficult decades in the 20th century when Hungary was one of the largest countries in the Soviet Union’s Eastern Bloc, these masterpieces shine, day and night.
