Showing 1-8 of 8 results
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Béla Bartók Memorial House
North of Szilágyi Erzsébet fasor but still very much in the Buda Hills, this recently renovated house is where the great composer resided from 1932 until 1940, when he emigrated to the USA. Among other things on display is the old Edison recorder (complete with wax cylinders) that Bartók used to record Hungarian folk music in Transylvania, as well as furniture and other objects he collected.
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Citadella
Built by the Habsburgs after the 1848-49 War of Independence to 'defend' the city from further insurrection, by the time the Citadella was ready in 1851, the political climate had changed and it had become obsolete. It was given to the city in the 1890s, and parts of it were symbolically blown to pieces. Today the Citadella contains some big guns and dusty displays in the courtyard, a waxworks, a restaurant and a dance club.
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Crown Of St Stephen
Legend tells us that it was Asztrik, the first abbot of the Benedictine monastery at Pannonhalma in Western Transdanubia, who presented a crown to Stephen as a gift from Pope Sylvester II around the year 1000, thus legitimising the new king's rule and assuring his loyalty to Rome over Constantinople. It's a nice story but has nothing to do with the object on display in the Parliament building.
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Fishermen's Bastion
The bastion is a neo-Gothic masquerade that most visitors (and Hungarians) believe to be much older. But who cares? It looks medieval and still offers among the best views in Budapest. Built as a viewing platform in 1905 by Frigyes Schulek, the bastion's name was taken from the guild of fishermen responsible for defending this stretch of the wall in the Middle Ages. The seven gleaming white turrets represent the Magyar tribes that entered the Carpathian Basin in the late 9th century.
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Kerepes Cemetery
About 500m southeast of Keleti train station is the entrance to Budapest's equivalent of Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, established in 1847. Some of the mausoleums are worthy of a pharaoh, especially those of statesmen and national heroes Lajos Kossuth, Ferenc Deák and Lajos Batthyány. Other tombs are quite moving, like those of actress Lujza Blaha and poet Endre Ady. Plot 21 contains the graves of many who died in the 1956 revolution.
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New Municipal Cemetery
This huge city cemetery, reached by tram from Blaha Lujza tér, is where Imre Nagy, prime minister during the 1956 Uprising, and 2000 others were buried in unmarked graves (plots 300-301) after executions in the late 1940s and 1950s. Today, the area has been turned into a moving National Pantheon and is about a 30-minute walk from the entrance; follow the signs pointing the way to '300, 301 parcela'.
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Royal Palace
The Royal Palace has been burned, bombed, razed, rebuilt and redesigned at least six times over the past seven centuries. It's now an 18th- and early 20th-century amalgam reconstructed after the last war. Take a majestic walk through Ferdinand Gate, under Mace Tower, to the Turkish cemetery or relax in the palace gardens behind the Budapest History Museum.
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Royal Postal Savings Bank
On the street south of the US Embassy (V Szabadság tér 12) you'll find the sensational former Royal Postal Savings Bank, a Secessionist extravaganza of colourful tiles and folk motifs built by Ödön Lechner in 1901. It is now part of the National Bank of Hungary (Magyar Nemzeti Bank; V Szabadság tér 8) next door, which has reliefs that illustrate trade and commerce through history: Arab camel traders, African rug merchants, Chinese tea salesmen - and the inevitable solicitor witnessing contracts.
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