Budapest's Number One Visitor Attraction
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Reviewed by:
Editorial Staff
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In Buda, contrary to many other capitals, the royal castle really is at the
top of a hill, as it is in all the best old stories. Known as the Royal Palace
of Buda, it is visible from virtually every point in the city.
Not just one but
three castles have been built on this site. The first appeared in the thirteenth
century after the Mongol invasion and was a thick-walled fortress intended to
withstand enemy attacks. Few contemporary descriptions have survived but archcological
digs have revealed fragmentary remains.
In the fourteenth century it was enlarged
in the Gothic style, and then at the time of one of Hungary’s greatest
monarchs, King Matthias, it was remodelled into a Renaissance palace famed far
and wide. The Turks took Buda without a battle in 1541, and for a while the
medicval buildings remained structurally intact. However, they suffered grievously
later through siege, conflagration, explosion and earthquake.
The city walls
often had to be patched up and new bastions built, and today a part of the fortifications
from this period can still be seen.Having lasted almost 150 years Turkish rule
ended with a three-month siege, and this heralded the third main period of castle
building in Buda. Ruined buildings were cleared away, cellars filled in, and
in 1714 the building of a baroque palace began.
It was further extended in the
nineteenth century into the form with which we are familiar today. The Royal
Palace was completely burned out in the Second World War, losing in the process
its valuable furniture and art treasures. On restoration it was converted into
a centre of culture becoming home to the medicval, Renaissance, baroque and
later Hungarian masterpieces that comprise the permanent collection of the Hungarian
National Gallery.
In separate wings of the palace complex, the Budapest History
Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and the principal library of Hungary,
the Széchényi Library are housed. The Palace can be reached from
the Danube embankment by the Castle District’s own special funicular railway,
the “Sikló”. The two coaches and both stations have been
restored to their original nineteenth century condition.
Category: General Tips
