History of Budapest

This article is about the history of Budapest until recent times. For other aspects of the city, see Budapest.

Budapest, including the Banks of the Danube, the Buda Castle Quarter and Andrássy Avenue

UNESCO World Heritage Site
Buda Castle Quarter
Criteria	Cultural: ii, iv
Reference	400
Inscription	1987 (11th Session)
Extensions	2002

Prehistory and Roman era

Main articles: Hungarian prehistory and Aquincum

The first town, built by Celts, occupied about 30 hectares along the slopes of Gellért Hill (first century BC). Archaeological finds suggest that it may have been a densely populated settlement, with a separate district of craftsmen (potteries and bronze foundries). It may have been a trading centre as well, as coins coming from different regions would indicate. The town was occupied by the Romans at the beginning of the Christian era. Its inhabitants moved to the Danube plains, to a city retaining the Celtic name (Aquincum), in the first century. In AD 106 the city became the capital of the province Pannonia Inferior. The headquarters of the governor and significant military force were stationed here, and its population numbered about 20,000. It was frequently involved in wars on the border of the Roman Empire (formed by the Danube).

Middle Ages

Main article: Kingdom of Hungary in the Middle Ages

The Romans pulled out in the 5th century AD to be succeeded by the Huns through fierce battles. Germanic tribes, Lombards, Avars and Slavs all passed through during the second Age of Migrations (following the split up of the Hun tribe, after Attila the Hun died), until the arrival of the Magyars in about 896. The peace treaty of 829 added Pannonia to Bulgaria after the victory of the Bulgarian army under Omurtag over Holy Roman Empire under Louis the Pious. Budapest arose out of two Bulgarian military frontier fortresses Buda and Pest, situated on the two banks of Danube. While other tribes spread across the entire Carpathian basin, the clan of Árpád settled down on Csepel Island, a large island in the Danube, forming a shelter for the settlers who started agricultural works (south part of Budapest today). It was under the Árpád dynasty that Hungary became a Christian state, ruled first from Esztergom and later from Székesfehérvár.

After the Bulgarian–Hungarian Wars, Buda and Pest started their development in the 12th century, which was largely thanks to the French, Walloon and German settlers who migrated here and worked and traded under royal protection along the banks of the Danube. Both towns were devastated during the Mongol invasion of Europe in 1241-42 and subsequently rebuilt by colonists from Germany, who re-named Buda "Ofen", after its numerous lime kilns. (The "Pest" name, which has a Slav origin, also means "furnace".)

Renaissance

Main articles: History of Buda Castle and Ottoman Hungary

File:Budacastle.jpg

Buda Castle

During the 14th century, the Angevin kings from France established Buda as the royal seat of centralized power. They built a succession of palaces on the Várhegy or Castle Hill, reaching its zenith during the Renaissance under the reign of "Good King" Mátyás (1458-90) and his Italian-born wife, Queen Beatrice of Naples, with a golden age of prosperity and a flourishing of the arts. Hungary's catastrophic defeat in the Battle of Mohács in 1526 against the invading Turks led by Suleiman the Magnificent, paved the way for the Ottoman occupation of Hungary. Suleiman's siege of Buda (1541) was part of the Little War in Hungary between the Habsburgs and the Ottoman Empire. Three years after the Battle of Vienna, a pan-European multinational army besieged Buda Castle in the Battle of Buda (1686) for six weeks, finally recapturing it on the 12th attempt with heavy losses on both sides.

18th century

Main article: History of Hungary 1700-1919

During the 18th century, under the rule of Charles III, Maria Theresia and her son Joseph II, Budapest was an insignificant provincial town. Vienna controlled the foreign affairs, defense, tariffs, and other functions. A mostly formal Diet, customarily called together every three years in Pozsony (Bratislava), ruled what was called "Royal Hungary".

19th century

Main articles: Hungarian Revolution of 1848 and Austria-Hungary

Széchenyi Chain Bridge

In the first decades of the following century, Pest became the center of the Reform movement led by Count Széchenyi, whose vision of progress was embodied in the construction of the Lánchíd (Chain Bridge). This became the first permanent bridge between Buda and Pest, which had until then, relied strictly on pontoon bridges or barges and ferries.

The Hungarian Revolution of 1848 was part of the Revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas. With the leadership of Lajos Kossuth (1802-94) and the "people's rights-liberals" dominated parliament, Sándor Petőfi (1823-49), also a renowned poet, and his fellow revolutionaries began to plot downfall of the Habsburgs in Budapest at the Café Pilvax (which exists to this day in central Pest). From here, they planned and mobilized crowds on the streets of Pest, leading to the steps of the National Museum where Petőfi recited his moving "National Poem" which roused up the crowds and gave a push start of emotions to the people, creating passion for the revolution, similar to the French revolution before. After the civil war of fighting for independence ended in defeat for the Hungarians, Habsburg repression was epitomized by the newly built Citadella on top of Gellért Hill, built to frighten the citizens with its cannons and large garrison of soldiers overlooking the entire city.

The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 made allowance for the dual monarchy of Austria–Hungary, known in German as k.u.k. (based on German for "Emperor and King"). The twin cities underwent rapid growth and expansion, and finally formally merged. Pest was extensively rebuilt based on the model of Paris, with the main artery: Nagykörút (Great Boulevard) and Andrássy Avenue which lead to Heroes' Square and a great park with fountains and lakes. Budapest's millennial anniversary celebrations of the settlement of the Magyars in the region in 1896 brought a fresh rush of construction and development. The Heroes' Square and Vajdahunyad Castle, located at end of Andrássy Avenue are just two perfect examples of the monumental scale and style that influenced the period. New suburbs were created to make room and house the rapidly growing and financially expanding population, which by now was predominantly Magyar, although there developed a sizable German as well as a Jewish community due to immigration to the city. In texts from around that period, Budapest was commonly rendered as "Buda-Pesth" (or "Budapesth") in English.

20th century

Main articles: Hungary during World War II, People's Republic of Hungary, and Hungarian Revolution of 1956

File:Heroes Square in 1919.jpg

The polyethnic nature of Budapest in 1919. The Heroes Square of Budapest was completely demolished and rebuilt into Marx-Engels memorial by the communists. The Communists wanted to destroy all Hungarian historical monuments statues and national symbols.

At the beginning of the 20th century the cultural efflorescence and sparkling energy of abundance and well-being of Budapest rivaled that of Vienna and its café society that of Paris, a belle époque extinguished by World War I. In the aftermath of World War I which had led to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, half of the Hungarian population was cut away from Hungary by the Treaty of Trianon and made part of surrounding nations. In 1918-19, Budapest was shaken by two revolutions: the Aster Revolution brought about the Hungarian Democratic Republic, which was followed by the Hungarian Soviet Republic, a short-lived Communist regime led by Béla Kun, followed by two years of White Terror‎. The Hungarian–Romanian War of 1919 ended with the Romanian occupation of parts of Hungary proper, including Budapest in August 1919, and the establishment of the Kingdom of Hungary, led by Miklós Horthy, the self-appointed regent for the exiled King Karl IV (see the conflict of Charles IV with Miklós Horthy). His domain and regency was characterized by gala balls as well as hunger marches by the poor, of nationalism and anti-Semitism by inheritance, again inherited by joining the wrong side (the Nazis), who promised the sweet reward of re-joining of the Hungarian nation as a whole in the post-Trianon era. Yet Horthy was considered a moderate compared to the fascist Arrow Cross Party, whose power grew as World War II raged across Europe.

Anticipating and knowing about Horthy's communication with the Allies and possible defection from the Axis alliance in 1944, the Nazis staged “Operation Panzerfaust”, a coup against Horthy, and installed an Arrow Cross government under Ferenc Szálasi to make allowance for the unobstructed massacre of the Jews of Budapest.

Before World War II, approximately 200,000 Jews lived in Budapest, making it the center of Hungarian Jewish cultural life. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Budapest was a safe haven for Jewish refugees. Before the war some 5,000 refugees, primarily from Germany and Austria, arrived in Budapest. With the beginning of deportations of Jews from Slovakia in March 1942, as many as 8,000 Slovak Jewish refugees also settled in Budapest. Hungary was allied with Nazi Germany. Despite discriminatory legislation against the Jews and widespread antisemitism, the Jewish community of Budapest was relatively secure until the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944 (Operation Margarethe). With the occupation, the Germans ordered the establishment of a Jewish council in Budapest and severely restricted Jewish life. Apartments occupied by Jews were confiscated. Hundreds of Jews were rounded up and interned in the Kistarcsa transit camp (originally established by Hungarian authorities), 15 miles (24 km) northeast of Budapest. Between April and July 1944, the Germans and Hungarians deported Jews from the Hungarian provinces. By the end of July, the Jews in Budapest were virtually the only Jews remaining in Hungary. They were not immediately ghettoized. Instead, in June 1944, Hungarian authorities ordered the Jews into over 2,000 designated buildings scattered throughout the city. The buildings were marked with Stars of David. About 25,000 Jews from the suburbs of Budapest were rounded up and transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. Hungarian authorities suspended the deportations in July 1944, sparing the remaining Jews of Budapest, at least temporarily. Many Jews searched for places of hiding or for protection. They were aided by foreign diplomats like Nuncio Angelo Rotta, Raoul Wallenberg, Giorgio Perlasca, Carl Lutz, Friedrich Born, Harald Feller, Angel Sanz Briz and George Mandel-Mantello who organized false papers and safe houses for them. These actions saved tens of thousands of Jews.

In October 1944, Germany orchestrated a coup and installed a new Hungarian government dominated by the fascist Arrow Cross Party under Ferenc Szálasi. The remaining Jews of Budapest were again in grave danger. The Arrow Cross instituted a reign of terror in Budapest and hundreds of Jews were shot. Jews were also drafted for brutal forced labor. On November 8, 1944, the Arrow Cross militia concentrated more than 70,000 Jews—men, women, and children—in the Ujlaki brickyards in Obuda, and from there forced them to march on foot to camps in Austria. Thousands were shot and thousands more died as a result of starvation or exposure to the bitter cold. The prisoners who survived the death march reached Austria in late December 1944. There, the Germans took them to various concentration camps, especially Dachau in southern Germany and Mauthausen in northern Austria, and to Vienna, where they were employed in the construction of fortifications around the city. In November 1944, the Arrow Cross ordered the remaining Jews in Budapest into a closed ghetto. Jews who did not have protective papers issued by a neutral power were to move to the ghetto by early December. Between December 1944 and the end of January 1945, the Arrow Cross took Jews from the ghetto in nightly razzias, as well as deserters from the Hungarian army or political enemies, shot them along the banks of the Danube and threw their bodies into the river. Soviet forces captured Budapest on February 13, 1945. More than 100,000 Jews remained in the city at time of capture..

Upon retreating, the Germans also blew up all the Danube bridges as a way of hampering the progress of the Communist Red Army of the Soviets. A six month long siege of Budapest reduced the entire city, but mostly the Castle District to rubble, as it was assigned to the mostly Hungarian army with German leadership to defend and to "hold back". Most roofs in Budapest were blown in by Soviet bombs, walls blown in by Soviet tanks. The occupants sought shelter in cellars and ate dead horsemeat found in the streets just to survive.

As the Communists gained power by force as the Americans and other Allies retreated and gave way, fearing the Communists, the former Arrow Cross torture chambers in the prisons filled up once again. But this time with the Soviet appointed staff made up mostly of opportunity seekers to gain wealth and power over their neighbors. However there was some brightness for the suffering population, his liberally inclined successor, Imre Nagy. He gave hope to the people who refused to tolerate a comeback of the earlier hardliner communists of the 1956 regime—where tens and thousands of innocent people were massacred in the streets of Budapest—while the Hungarian Communist leaders attempted to regain power. In Budapest, peaceful protests turned into a city-wide uprising literally overnight, with men, women and children defying Soviet tanks on the streets. Starvation and oppression was used as a standard tool by the Communist Hungarians who changed sides for their own gains. Random arrests initiated many times by neighbors as informants made people disappear into trucks, never to be heard from again.

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was suppressed, Soviet power was forcefully restored, and a new Soviet-elected leader emerged in the person of János Kádár. He embarked on cautious reforms to create a "Goulash Communism" that made Hungary stand out from its Warsaw Pact neighbors. Due to the cooperative efforts of Kádár and huge loans taken from the West to offset the failing economy, Hungary became the favorite Communist state of the West by the late 1970s. A decade later, the self-empowered regime saw the writing on the wall and anticipated Gorbachev by promising free elections hoping to reap public gratitude. Instead, as Communism was toppled in Berlin and Prague, the only party, the Communist Party, was simply voted out of power in Hungary, initiating a peaceful transition from one system to another. Hungarians simply refer to all that has happened since then as "the Changes".

After 1989

Main article: Politics of Hungary

The revolutions of 1989 brought with them the end of Soviet occupation of Hungary, which meant the end of Communism in Hungary. Budapest succeeded in taking advantage of new economic possibilities and pursuing development more efficiently than the other parts of the country. Upon the shutdown of Socialist industrial plants plenty of new workplaces were generated, especially on the fields of service and trade industries. In the Budapest area unemployment is the lowest and average income per capita is the highest. The local government law legislated after the transition provided new rights or licenses for the districts of Budapest. The Metropolitan Government has difficulties conducting an autonomous civic policy. Local minority governments had also sprang forth, active mainly on cultural fields. Soroksár was added as a new autonomous district in 1994.
Gábor Demszky, a member of the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ), has been the mayor of Budapest since 1990.

During the 2006 protests in Hungary, triggered by the release of Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány's private speech in which he confessed that his Hungarian Socialist Party had lied to win the 2006 election, tens of thousands of people assembled in Budapest in September and October 2006.

Timeline of the history of Budapest

Year	Event
B.C.	Neolithic, Chalcolithic-, bronze and iron age cultures, Celtic and Eravisci settlements on present day Budapest.
1st century	Romans found the settlements known as Aquincum, Contra-Aquincum and Campona. Aquincum becomes the largest town of the Danubian region and one of the capitals of Pannonia.
5th century	The Age of Huns. King Attila builds a city for himself here according to later chronicles.
896	Following the foundation of Hungary, Árpád, leader of the Hungarians, settles in the "Town of Attila", usually identified as Aquincum.
10th century	Out of the seven to ten Hungarian tribes, four have settlements in the territory of modern Budapest: Megyer, Keszi, Jenő and Nyék.
1046	Bishop Gellért dies at the hands of pagans on present-day Gellért Hill.
1241	During the Tatar invasions both towns are destroyed. King Béla IV builds the first royal castle on Castle Hill, Buda in 1248. The new town adopts the name of Buda from the earlier one (present day Óbuda). Pest is surrounded by city walls.
1270	Saint Margaret of Hungary dies in a cloister on the Isle of Rabbits (present day Margaret Island).
1458	The noblemen of Hungary elect Latin: Matthias Corvinus (lang-hu|Hunyadi Mátyás}} as king on the ice of the Danube. Under his reign Buda becomes a main hub of European Renaissance. He dies in 1490, after capturing Vienna in 1485.
1541	The beginning of Ottoman occupation. The Turkish Pashas build multiple mosques and baths in Buda.
1686	Buda and Pest are reconquered from the Turks with Habsburg leadership. Both towns are destroyed completely in the battles.
1690s	Resettlement, initially only a few hundred German settlers.
1773	Election of the first Mayor of Pest.
1777	Maria Theresa of Austria moves Nagyszombat University to Castle Hill.
1783	Joseph II places the acting government (Helytartótanács) and Magyar Kamara on Buda.
1795 20 May	Ignác Martinovics and other Jacobin leaders are executed on Vérmező or 'The Field of Blood'.
1810	A fire in the Tabán district.
1825	Commencement of the Reform Era. Pest becomes the cultural and economic centre of the country. The first National Theatre is built, along with the Hungarian National Museum and the Széchenyi Lánchíd.
1838	The biggest flood in recent memory in March. Pest is completely inundated.
1848 15 March	Start of the Revolution and War of Independence of 1848-49. Pest replaces Pozsony (now Bratislava, Slovakia) as the new capital of Hungary and seat of the Batthyány Government and the Diet (Parliament).
1849	The Austrians occupy the city in early January, but the Hungarian Honvédség (Army of National Defense) reclaims it in April, taking the fortress of Buda on May 21 after an 18-day siege. In July, the Habsburg army again captures the two towns.
1849 6 October	Lajos Batthyány, the first Hungarian Prime Minister is executed in Pest on the same day as the thirteen martyrs of Arad.
1867	Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, followed by unprecedented civic development, resulting in the style of present day Budapest.
1873	The former cities: Pest, Buda and Óbuda are united, and with that the Hungarian capital is established with the name of Budapest.
1874	The Budapest Cog-wheel Railway service is inaugurated.
1878	Electric public lighting installed in downtown.
1893	Electrification of Budapest finished
1896	Millennium celebrations, the Millennium Underground is inaugurated, and the Ferenc József híd (today's Liberty Bridge) is opened.
1909–1910	Electric public lighting expanded to the nearby towns villages.
1910	The census finds 880,000 people in Budapest and 55,000 in the largest suburb of Újpest (now part of Budapest). The religious make-up was 60.9% Catholic, 23.1% Jewish, 9.9% Calvinist and 5.0% Lutheran. Újpest was 65.9% Catholic, 18.4% Jewish, 9.7% Calvinist and 4.5% Lutheran. The percentage of ethnic Germans was 9.0% in Budapest and 5.7% in Újpest, while 2.3% of the population claimed to be Slovak. (Source: Történelmi Magyarország atlasza és adattára 1914, Budapest, 2001.)
1918–1919	Revolution and the 133 days of the Hungarian Soviet Republic (March-August 1919) under the leadership of Béla Kun. It is the first Communist government to be formed in Europe after the October Revolution in Russia.
1924	Hungarian National Bank is founded.
1925	Hungarian Radio commences broadcasting.
1933	Disassembly of the Tabán commences.
1944 19 March	Budapest is occupied by the Germans. At the time of the occupation, there were 184,000 Jews and between 65,000 and 80,000 Christians considered Jewish in the town. Fewer than half of them (approximately 119,000) survived the following 11 months.
1944 26 December - 13 February	Soviet and Romanian troops besiege Budapest from 15 January to 18 January. The retreating Germans destroy all Danube bridges. On 18 January, Pest and its ghetto are completely liberated. The Buda castle falls on 13 February. World War II took the lives of close to 200,000 Budapest residents and caused widespread damage to the buildings of the city.
1956 23 October - 4 November	The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 breaks out, ending in the invasion of a large Soviet force.
1960s	Wartime damages are largely repaired. Work on the final bridge to be repaired, the Elizabeth Bridge is finished in 1965.
1970–1972	The first phase of the East-Western Metro begins.
1982	The first phase of the North-Southern Metro begins.
1987	Castle Hill and the banks of the Danube are included in the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
1990	The city is home to 2,016,100 residents.
2002	Andrássy Avenue is added to the list of World heritage Sites, along with the Millennium Underground railway and Heroes' Square.
2006	Mass protests against social-liberal Gyurcsány government.