Page 21 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Budapest

INTRODUCING BUD APEST  19

HISTORY OF BUDAPEST

As early as the Palaeolithic era, there Liberation by the Christian armies resulted
were settlements in the area of Budapest: in the submission of the coun try as a
the narrowing of the Danube made the whole to the Habsburgs. They suppressed
crossing of the river easy at this particular all nationalist rebellions, but at the same
spot. In around AD 100, the Romans time took care of eco nomic development.
established the town of Aquincum here. Empress Maria Theresa and Archduke
Their rule lasted until the early 5th century Joseph, the emperor’s governor, made
AD, when the region fell to Attila the Hun. particular contributions to the modern­
It was subsequently ruled by the Goths, ization of both Buda and Pest. Yet, the slow
the Longobards and, for nearly 300 years, pace of reforms led to an uprising in 1848,
by the Avars. which was brutally crushed by Franz Joseph
The ancestors of modern Hungarians, I. Compromise in 1867 and the creation of
the Magyars, mig rated from the Urals and an Austro­Hungarian Empire stimulated
arrived in the Budapest region in 896. economic and cultural life once more. Soon
They were led by Prince Árpád, whose after, in 1873, Buda and Pest were united to
dynasty ruled until the 13th century. At create the city of Budapest.
the turn of the first millennium, St István, Following World War I, the monarchy
whose heathen name was Vajk, accepted fell and Hungary lost two thirds of its
Christianity for the Hungarians. As their territory. The desire to regain this
first crowned king, István I also laid the contributed to its support of Germany
basis of the modern Hungarian state. in World War II. However, Budapest was
It was Béla IV who, in 1247, after the taken by Soviet troops in 1945 and became
Mongol invasion, moved the capital to a territory within the Soviet sphere of
Buda. Much of the expansion of Buda took interest. Under the subsequent Communist
place under kings from the dynasty of the rule, the popular uprising of 1956 was
Angevins. Buda reached a zenith during ruthlessly suppressed by Soviet tanks but it
the reign of Mátyás Corvinus in the 15th initiated a crisis that shook the regime. Free
century, but further development was elections took place in 1990, resulting in the
hindered by the advancing Turks, who took victory of the democratic opposition, and
the region and ruled Buda for 150 years. the emergence of a new bourgeoisie.

Dating from 1686, when the Turks were expelled, this map shows the fortified towns of Pest and Buda
Gyula Benczúr’s The Baptism of Vajk, displayed in the Hungarian National Gallery (see pp78–81)

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