From Aquincum to 1873: how Buda and Pest became Budapest

▶

Budapest is three towns joined by bridges. Buda, on its hills, is the royal city; Óbuda, to the north, is the oldest, with its Roman ruins; and Pest, on the flat eastern bank, is the merchant city of boulevards, cafés and the Parliament. They became one city only in 1873, just as Budapest entered its golden age.

▶

At a glance

Population: 1,685,342 (Hungarian Central Statistical Office, 2022 census).

Names through history: Aquincum (Roman); Buda, Óbuda and Pest, united as Budapest in 1873; Ofen and Pesth in German.

Peoples: Celts and Romans, then the Magyars from 895, with German, Jewish, Serbian, Slovak and Roma communities over the centuries.

Shaped by: Rome, the medieval Hungarian kingdom, the Ottoman Empire (1541–1686), the Habsburgs and Austria-Hungary (1867–1918), and modern Hungary.

Aquincum

Celtic tribes settled by the Danube, and the Romans built Aquincum, the capital of the province of Pannonia Inferior, in Óbuda. Its baths, amphitheatres and streets can be visited at the Aquincum Museum. The Romans also found the thermal springs that still feed the city’s baths.

The Magyars

The Magyars arrived in the Carpathian Basin in 895, and in the year 1000 Stephen was crowned the first king of Hungary; his right hand is kept as a relic in St Stephen’s Basilica. After the Mongol invasion of 1241, King Béla IV built a walled town on the Castle Hill of Buda, which under King Matthias Corvinus in the fifteenth century became one of the great Renaissance courts of Europe.

Ottoman Buda

The Ottomans took Buda in 1541 and held it for 145 years. They left the city its bathing culture: the Rudas and Király baths still have their sixteenth-century domed pools, and the tomb of Gül Baba, a dervish poet, stands on Rose Hill. A Habsburg-led army retook Buda in 1686.

The Habsburg centuries

Under the Habsburgs Buda and Pest were rebuilt in Baroque style. In the reform era of the early nineteenth century the Hungarian Academy of Sciences was founded (1825) and the Széchenyi Chain Bridge, the first permanent bridge across the Danube here, opened in 1849. After the revolution of 1848–1849, the Compromise of 1867 created the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary, with Budapest as its second capital.

1873 and the golden age

Buda, Óbuda and Pest were united in 1873, and the new city grew at astonishing speed. For the millennium of 1896 it built Andrássy Avenue, Heroes’ Square and the first underground railway on the European continent; the neo-Gothic Parliament was completed in 1904. Pest’s Jewish community, one of the largest in Europe, built the Dohány Street Synagogue (1859), the largest in Europe.

The twentieth century brought great suffering, in the Second World War and the Holocaust, and the uprising of 1956; the Shoes on the Danube Bank and the House of Terror remember those years.

Three towns, two banks and one river: Budapest became a single city only in 1873.

Arts and institutions

The Hungarian State Opera House (1884), the Liszt Academy of Music, the Museum of Fine Arts and the Hungarian National Gallery in Buda Castle make Budapest one of Europe’s great music and art cities. UNESCO lists the Danube banks, the Buda Castle Quarter and Andrássy Avenue as World Heritage.

Our advice: start the day in a thermal bath, cross the Chain Bridge to the Castle District for the view from the Fisherman’s Bastion, and end it on the Pest bank as the Parliament lights up across the river.

Sources

Population: Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH), 2022 Population Census. History: Budapest History Museum; Aquincum Museum; UNESCO World Heritage Centre (Budapest, including the Banks of the Danube, the Buda Castle Quarter and Andrássy Avenue); Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Budapest”.