Buda Castle District: Palace, Matthias Church and Fisherman's Bastion

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1. 1. Clark Ádám tér: The Zero Kilometre Stone

   Welcome to Clark Adam ter, the square at the Buda end of the Chain Bridge. Before you climb, find the pale stone sculpture shaped like a zero, at the foot of the hill beside the tunnel mouth. It marks kilometre zero, the point from which Hungarian road distances are measured, and it is the first sign that this hill keeps replacing its past. The zero in front of you is the third one. In nineteen thirty-two a marble Madonna was set up here, the patroness of Hungary, on a stone column carved with cars, carriages and people on foot. The war destroyed it, together with the ministry building beside it. In nineteen fifty-three the new communist state chose a different face for the same spot: a figure of a worker holding a wheel, gazing into the distance. In nineteen seventy-five that worker was removed in turn, and the sculptor Miklos Borsos gave the square this simple abstract zero. The worker still exists, on a small square on the city's eastern edge. Three eras, three ideas of where Hungary begins. The bridge beside you tells the same story. Retreating German troops blew it up on the eighteenth of January, nineteen forty-five. It reopened on the twentieth of November, nineteen forty-nine, exactly a century after its first opening. Up on the ridge, only one building came through the siege of nineteen forty-five with little more than broken glass. Everything you are about to see is the result of choices made afterwards. Now climb. Walk past the funicular's lower station to the foot of the hill, then follow the garden paths and steps as they zigzag up to the south, until you reach a wide terrace below the palace dome. Turn left along it to a bronze prince on horseback. If you ride the funicular instead, walk south from its top station to that terrace.

2. 2. Buda Castle: The Savoy Terrace

   This is the Savoy Terrace, and the rider above you is Prince Eugene of Savoy. He was never meant to stand here. The town of Zenta ordered him to mark its battle, could not raise the money, and the state bought him for the castle instead. Still, he earned the hill. In sixteen eighty-six he fought in the Christian army that took the city back after a hundred and forty-five years of Ottoman rule, and was badly wounded in the right hand. In sixteen ninety-seven he destroyed an Ottoman army at Zenta, the battle on the reliefs of his pedestal. Turn so the river is in front of you and the dome is behind you. The palace at your back has been rebuilt by almost every age that held this hill. The medieval royal palace here was wrecked in the siege of sixteen eighty-six, and it was not restored. A small baroque palace rose on the ruins from seventeen fifteen, and from seventeen forty-nine Maria Theresa enlarged it into a grand one, with the medieval walls buried under fill. From eighteen ninety the architects Miklos Ybl and then Alajos Hauszmann expanded it enormously, finishing in nineteen twelve. The siege of nineteen forty-five gutted it. Then the postwar rebuilders made their own choice. They stripped out interiors, including rooms and staircases that had survived the fighting, simplified the roofs, and in the nineteen sixties gave the palace the plainer dome you see now, in place of Hauszmann's. While they worked, archaeologists dug beneath the rubble and found the medieval palace the Habsburgs had buried. The dome is still an argument. Nobody is rebuilding Hauszmann's version, and the architect Janos Roth has called the idea nonsense. Today it still holds the National Gallery, whose future home is undecided. Upriver, to your left on the far bank, is the Parliament building. When you are ready, walk back along the terrace the way you came and climb the broad steps beside the palace, past a great bronze bird with its wings spread, to the square at the top.

3. 3. Szent György tér: Sándor Palace and the Rebuilt Riding Hall

   This is Szent Gyorgy ter, Saint George Square, and it is where the argument over the past is loudest. Almost everything around you has been demolished, rebuilt or repurposed within living memory. Find the long pale building with guards at its door. That is Sandor Palace, built in the early eighteen hundreds for a count, home to nearly every Hungarian prime minister from eighteen sixty-seven to nineteen forty-five, and since two thousand and three the office of the President. Next to it stands the front of a former Carmelite church and its long monastery. After the order was dissolved, the church became a theatre, and on the seventh of May, eighteen hundred, Beethoven played inside it. From twenty nineteen the monastery was the prime minister's office. In twenty twenty-six a new government moved that office out and opened the building to visitors. Past the palace gate at the south end of this square, about a hundred and fifty metres away and down in the courtyards on the palace's west side, stand the Riding Hall and the Main Guard House. You cannot see them from here, but they are worth the detour. The Riding Hall was pulled down in nineteen fifty-four. The Guard House and an elegant stairway beside it followed in nineteen seventy-one, and records from the time suggest the stairway was not falling down. All of them were rebuilt, and the last reopened in September, twenty twenty-one. Also on this square stood the Archduke Joseph Palace, badly damaged in the siege and demolished in nineteen sixty-eight, for what are now called ideological reasons. It has been rising again since twenty twenty-one, but in June, twenty twenty-six, the government dropped its planned use, and nobody yet knows what it will hold. This is the National Hauszmann Program, named after the palace's architect, which set out to put the hill back as it looked around nineteen hundred. Its critics call it costly. Its supporters call it repair. Either way, it is a choice. From here, turn round and walk north along Szinhaz utca, the street that runs past the theatre, to the next square.

4. 4. Dísz tér: The Honvéd Headquarters

   This is Disz ter, Parade Square, and the building to look for is the large one with a brand-new dome. It was built in the eighteen nineties as the headquarters of the Honved, the Hungarian army, to designs by Mor Kallina, who also built the Lutheran church you will pass at the…

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5. 5. Matthias Church: Holy Trinity Square and the Plague Column

   You are in Holy Trinity Square, the heart of the old town, with the tall white column just to your left and Matthias Church on your right. Start with the column. Buda was struck by plague in sixteen ninety-one, and the town council decided on a memorial. A first column went up,…

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6. 6. Fisherman's Bastion: The Fortress That Never Defended Anything

   This is the Fisherman's Bastion, and the bronze rider in front of you is Saint Stephen, Hungary's first king, made by the sculptor Alajos Strobl in nineteen oh six. The terrace behind him is a favourite photo spot, and it is the clearest case on this walk of a past that was…

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7. 7. Táncsics Mihály utca: Medieval Jewish Buda

   You are on Tancsics Mihaly utca, and number nine is the long plain building on your right. It was built in the early eighteen hundreds as a barracks, and part of it held political prisoners. Read the plaques on its front. Lajos Kossuth, one of the leaders of the revolution of…

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8. 8. Vienna Gate: The 1936 Victory Monument

   This is the Vienna Gate, the northern entrance to the old town, on the road that once led toward Vienna. There was a gate here in the Middle Ages, but the one you see is not old. It was rebuilt in nineteen thirty-six for a particular anniversary: two hundred and fifty years…

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9. 9. Abdurrahman Pasha Memorial: The Heroic Adversary

   This small stone, shaped like a turban and ringed with cannonballs on chains, is the one memorial on the hill to the other side of sixteen eighty-six. Abdurrahman Abdi Pasha was the last Ottoman governor of Buda. He was in his seventieth year when the armies of the Holy League…

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10. 10. Mary Magdalene Tower: One Tower Left Standing

    The walk ends at a tower with no church. This is the Mary Magdalene Tower, all that stands of the medieval church of Buda's Hungarian townspeople. For decades of Ottoman rule it was the only church in the town where Christians could still worship, shared by Catholics and…

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