According to pharmacylib, the banks of the Danube with its magnificent buildings, the castle district and the approximately 2.5 km long Andrássy Street are among the most outstanding urban ensembles in the world. They reflect the role of Budapest in Hungary as well as in European history.

Budapest: facts

Official title:	Buda Castle District and the Danube River Bank in Budapest
Cultural monument:	the city center of Budapest and the panorama of both banks of the Danube between Margaret Bridge and Gellért Hill with the Great Market Hall (1897), the inner-city parish church, the Redoute and the Great Synagogue as well as the Castle District of Buda with the Castle Palace and the Habsburg Palatine Crypt, the Fisherman’s Bastion and the Sándor Palace and the trading houses in Tárnok utca
Continent:	Europe
Country:	Hungary
Location:	Budapest
Appointment:	1987
Meaning:	one of the world’s outstanding urban landscapes and stone illustration of the history of the Hungarian capital

Budapest: history

1061	first written mention of Pest
1247-65	Construction of the first royal castle on Buda Castle Hill
1255-69	Construction of the Matthias Church at Buda Castle
1308	Coronation of Charles I of Anjou as King of Hungary
1347	The court moves from Visegrád to Buda
1387-1437	Sigismund of Luxembourg Hungarian King
1468	Pest royal free city
1526	Looting and pillage of Buda
1545-1686	Buda
1686	The Turks are driven out by the army of the Holy League
1703	Buda and Pest free cities
1873	Association of three cities, Buda, Obuda and Pest, in Budapest
1899-1905	Construction of the Fisherman’s Bastion
1980	Reopening of the Redoute (1821-84)

Win the world for yourself at the heart of Europe

Everything can be said of this city, everything and everything the opposite, it is glorious and hideous, lavish and poor, sensitive and rough.

If someone had instructed a time taxi driver in 1988 to transport him back to 1978, he would not have been particularly astonished at the differences, but he would have been transported here from 1988 to today, to the Merlin Theater, from Buda to Pest, to get through Weaving the years, we would have an opportunity to ponder the real or false difference in value between the gray and the colored.

The gray background will gradually take on color. I watch this city in amazement; It is not easy to anticipate how it will develop, a lot can be planned with it, the place has its own spirit, it creates its own future, you just have to let it go.

The tradition in this country is fragile, and although we long for a long, unfolding and cultivating continuity, we would not want to do without the peculiarity of fragility and turning points, the hardships we have experienced.

If you commit suicide here, you are not committing it out of boredom.

Compared to both Vienna and Prague, observers consider our city to be wirier, more proactive and more interesting.

A gifted city, its personalities do not have to be consulted, rather it has to be ensured that their diversity can emerge from the shadows and into the light.

In my opinion, a lot is illuminated by the pair of opposites urbanism versus statism. The subject of urbanism is the urban citizen, the subject of statism is the political class, at its head the hierarchy of leaders. One does not exist without the other, but if there is a difference in forces, then a constellation of strong city and weak state would be better than a combination of strong state and weak city.

The Budapesters can rightly be proud of the power, the compressed sources of strength and the great intellectual export capacity of their city. Several elites have gone out into the world, and exile has also been a silent conquest of the world.

Since 1944 I have seen Budapest in critical years, I have seen its residents, acquaintances, heroic, mean and mean. Since I am optimistic to the point of foolishness, when asked what will be more typical for us, cheerfulness and zest for life, diligence and spirit or pomposity and slander, hatred and laziness, I reply that the former is characteristic.

The fact that different peoples, religions, churches, worldviews and subcultures coexist here is good, that there are churchgoers is good, and it is also good that there are people who prefer to go on a trip to the mountains on Sunday mornings.

Budapest deserves self-confidence and its own aesthetic. This city does not allow itself to be uniformed, it strips off all censorship and looks skeptically at every attempt to educate and reeducate it.

It cannot be denied that in the Hungarian history of the past two centuries all dates that deserve a red mark on the calendar are due to the initiative of Budapest; All of the decisive changes, the revolutions and inventions, originated primarily in this city, where the concentration of talents is greatest, because those who face competition will sooner or later end up here, even if they are in the capital do not like.

After Berlin, Budapest has the greatest chances of assuming the role of a metropolis in Central Europe. Berlin and Budapest are the two most powerful cities in the middle of Europe. Budapest could be a center for the spirit of a new Central European urbanism, which says: You have no reason to be ashamed of yourself, confess yourself.

If Budapest is realistic, it will appreciate human diversity, then it will have eyes and ears for the other central European cities, but it will become boring and fall into isolation if it wants to purify itself, if it is in political power leaves or ascribes too great a role to his everyday life.

Budapest – an unpleasant, ungrateful, sullen, envious, jealous, rude, unpredictable and unreliable city. But, for example, that bigoted face that in New York, the number one among the world’s cities, the political moral guards associate with their voyeurism, could not put them on.

Budapest is interested in a territorial-regional organization of Hungary and Europe, because this allows a flexible framework in linguistic and cultural matters, which is a specific principle of order for the Hungarian national consciousness. This is what actually binds us together. There is no other political loyalty that would override linguistic togetherness.

It is to be hoped that Budapest will take part in the European conversation more and more impartially. Our performance and also our evaluation will develop according to how we want to see ourselves. Here on the Danube, at the heart of Europe, Budapest would have the opportunity to win the world over in its own way. This would require a generous, friendly and sovereign urban policy, under the sign of a Central European urbanism that passers-by also share.