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BUDAPEST
  

by a country well adapted to agriculture and stock-raising. Among its manufactures are machinery, structural steel, ventilating and heating apparatus, furniture, interior woodwork, ploughs, wagons, carriages, copper products and clay-working machines. Bucyrus was first settled in 1817; it was laid out as a town in 1822, was incorporated as a village in 1830, and became a city in 1885. The county-seat was permanently established here in 1830.


BUDAPEST, the capital and largest town of the kingdom of Hungary, and the second town of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, 163 m. S.E. of Vienna by rail. Budapest is situated on both banks of the Danube, and is formed of the former towns of Buda (Ger. Ofen) together with O-Buda (Ger. Alt-Ofen) on the right bank, and of Pest together with Köbánya (Ger. Steinbruch) on the left bank, which were all incorporated into one municipality in 1872. It lies at a point where the Danube has definitely taken its southward course, and just where the outlying spurs of the outer ramifications of the Alps, namely, the Bakony Mountains, meet the Carpathians. Budapest is situated nearly in the centre of Hungary, and dominates by its strategical position the approach from the west to the great Hungarian plain. The imposing size of the Danube, 300 to 650 yds. broad, and the sharp contrast of the two banks, place Budapest among the most finely situated of the larger towns of Europe. On the one side is a flat sandy plain, in which lies Pest, modern of aspect regularly laid out, and presenting a long frontage of handsome buildings to the river. On the other the ancient town of Buda straggles capriciously over a series of small and steep hills, commanded by the fortress and the Blocksberg (770 ft. high, 390 ft. above the Danube), and backed beyond by spurs of mountains, which rise in the form of terraces one above the other. The hills are generally devoid of forests, while those near the towns were formerly covered with vineyards, which produced a good red wine. The vineyards have been almost completely destroyed by the phylloxera.

Budapest covers an area of 78 sq. m., and is divided into ten municipal districts, namely Vár (Festung), Viziváros (Wasserstadt), Ó-Buda (Alt-Ofen), all on the right bank, belonging to Buda, and Belváros (Inner City), Lipótváros (Leopoldstadt), Terézváros (Theresienstadt), Erzsébetváros (Elisabethstadt), Józsefváros (Josephstadt), Ferenczváros (Franzstadt), and Köbánya (Steinbruch), all on the left bank, belonging to Pest. Buda, with its royal palace, the various ministries, and other government offices, is the official centre, while Pest is the commercial and industrial part, as well as the centre of the nationalistic and intellectual life of the town. The two banks of the Danube are united by six bridges, including two fine suspension bridges; the first of them, generally known as the Ketten-Brücke, constructed by the brothers Tiernay and Adam Clark in 1842–1849, is one of the largest in Europe. It is 410 yds. long, 39 ft. broad, 36 ft. high above the mean level of the water, and its chains rest on two pillars 160 ft. high; its ends are ornamented with four colossal stone lions. At one end is a tunnel, 383 yds. long, constructed by Adam Clark in 1854, which pierces the castle hill and connects the quarter known as the Christinenstadt with the Danube. The other suspension bridge is the Schwurplatz bridge, completed in 1903, 56 ft. broad, with a span of 317 yds. The other bridges are the Margaret bridge, with a junction bridge towards the Margaret island, the Franz Joseph bridge, and two railway bridges.

Perhaps the most attractive part of Budapest is the line of broad quays on the left bank of the Danube, which extend for a distance of 21/2 m. from the Margaret bridge to the custom-house, and are lined with imposing buildings. The most important of these is the Franz Joseph Quai, 1 m. long, which contains the most fashionable cafés and hotels, and is the favourite promenade. The inner town is surrounded by the Innere Ring-Strasse, a circle of wide boulevards on the site of the old wall. Wide tree-shaded streets, like the Király Utcza, the Kerrepesi Ut, and the Üllöi Ut, also form the lines of demarcation between the different districts. The inner ring is connected by the Váczi Körut (Waitzner-Ring) with the Grosse Ring-Strasse, a succession of boulevards, describing a semicircle beginning at the Margaret bridge and ending at the Boráros Platz, near the custom-house quay, through about the middle of the town. One of the most beautiful streets in the town is the Andrássy Ut, 11/2 m. long, connecting Váczi Körut with Városliget (Stadtwäldchen), the favourite public park of Budapest. It is a busy thoroughfare, lined in its first half with magnificent new buildings, and in its second half, where it attains a width of 150 ft., with handsome villas standing in their own gardens, which give the impression rather of a fashionable summer resort than the centre of a great city. Budapest possesses numerous squares, generally ornamented with monuments of prominent Hungarians, usually the work of Hungarian artists.

Buildings.—Though of ancient origin, neither Buda nor Pest has much to show in the way of venerable buildings. The oldest church is the Matthias church in Buda, begun by King Bela IV. in the 13th century, completed in the 15th century, and restored in 1890–1896. It was used as a mosque during the Turkish occupation, and here took place the coronation of Franz Joseph as king of Hungary in 1867. The garrison church, a Gothic building of the 13th century, and the Reformed church, finished in 1898, are the other ecclesiastical buildings in Buda worth mentioning. The oldest church in Pest is the parish church situated in the Eskü-Ter (Schwur-Platz) in the inner town; it was built in 1500, in the Gothic style, and restored in 1890. The most magnificent church in Pest is the Leopoldstadt Basilica, a Romanesque building with a dome 315 ft. in height, begun in 1851; next comes the Franzstadt church, also a Romanesque building, erected in 1874. Besides several modern churches, Budapest possesses a beautiful synagogue, in the Moorish style, erected in 1861, and another, in the Moorish-Byzantine style, built in 1872, while in 1901 the construction of a much larger synagogue was begun. In Buda, near the Kaiserbad, and not far from the Margaret bridge, is a small octagonal Turkish mosque, with a dome 25 ft. high, beneath which is the grave of a Turkish monk. By a special article in the treaty of Karlowitz of 1699 the emperor of Austria undertook to preserve this monument.

Among the secular buildings the first place is taken by the royal palace in Buda, which, together with the old fortress, crowns the summit of a hill, and forms the nucleus of the town. The palace erected by Maria Theresa in 1748–1771 was partly burned in 1849, but has been restored and largely extended since 1894. In the court chapel are preserved the regalia of Hungary, namely, the crown of St Stephen, the sceptre, orb, sword and the coronation robes. It is surrounded by a magnificent garden, which descends in steep terraces to the Danube, and which offers a splendid view of the town lying on the opposite bank. New and palatial buildings of the various ministries, several high and middle schools, a few big hospitals, and the residences of several Hungarian magnates, are among the principal edifices in this part of the town.

The long range of substantial buildings fronting the left bank of the Danube includes the Houses of Parliament (seeArchitecture, Plate IX. fig. 115), a huge limestone edifice in the late Gothic style, covering an area of 33/4 acres, erected in 1883–1902; the Academy, in Renaissance style, erected in 1862–1864, containing a lofty reception room, a library, a historic picture gallery, and a botanic collection; the Redoute buildings, a large structure in a mixed Romanesque and Moorish style, erected for balls and other social purposes; the extensive custom-house at the lower end of the quays, and several fine hotels and insurance offices. In the beautiful Andrássy Ut are the opera-house (1875–1884), in the Italian Renaissance style; the academy of music; the old and new exhibition building; the national drawing school; and the museum of fine arts (1900–1905), in which was installed in 1905 the national gallery, formed by Prince Esterházy, bought by the government in 1865 for £130,000, and formerly housed in the academy, and the collection of modern pictures from the national museum. At the end of the street is one of the numerous monuments erected in various parts of the country to commemorate the thousandth anniversary of the foundation of the kingdom of Hungary. Other buildings remarkable for their