The Buda Side: 6th June

Castle Hill is a mile long ridge, containing the Royal Palace and Buda old town, looming directly over the Danube. It’s a great defensive position, which accounts for it having been ravaged eighty six times in the last 700 years according to my guide book. The last occasion was in early 1945 when the Red Army and Nazis slugged it out with all the destructive power of modern weapons. So what you see today is a painstaking, faithful reconstruction - and you’d never guess.

We cross from Pest to Buda via the “famous chain bridge” (quote from Hop-on, Hop-off commentary) that I’d never heard of before, but it was quite striking. 

It’s a hot day, so on arriving at the far bank we use the cog railway to ascend Varhegy, Castle Hill to us. This was cutting edge in its day, the second funicular railway in the world when it opened in 1870. It’s now cutting edge restoration as it was hit by a shell in 1945.

At the top you’re right next to the Royal Palace that houses the Hungarian National Gallery, the Budapest History Museum and the National Library. The exterior is magnificent and ornate, but inside the reconstruction is functional and did not seek to replicate the elaborate palace that was destroyed in battle of late WW2.

Strolling into old Buda, the most noticeable feature is Matyas Church. The original building dated from the 13^th century, but it was adapted and altered so many time that the post 1945 rebuild hardly seems to matter. During the 160 years of Turkish occupation it was even a mosque. It’s beautifully proportioned with a patterned tile roof.

Inside the recreated colour scheme is overwhelming. It looks like mosaic at first glance but is in fact painted: every bit of wall and ceiling, and it’s stunning.

 Outside, next to the church and overlooking the river, is the Fishermen’ Bastion. The fishermen in the Middle Ages apparently stoutly defended this part of the town. But not from the Bastion, that’s a later decorative addition. It looks the biz though. What’s wrong with a bit of Disney?

We take another look at the view from the Palace terrace. It’s a terrific panorama of Buda, Pest and the Danube, which is definitely not blue, more a muddy brown. You can’t get all of that in one photo, so this is us with the backdrop of Pest, the Danube AND the Chain Bridge, getting more famous by the minute.

Budapest provided an interesting explore, what you could normally expect from an historic European capital city. It helped that many notices, leaflets and other communications were in English because Hungarian is not one of the languages you can easily guess, in fact it has no connection with any other language apart from a slight similarity to Finnish. And with that, we finish in Budapest.