Budapest: Why you should visit this brutally beautiful city

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This was published 5 years ago

Budapest: Why you should visit this brutally beautiful city

By Alison Stewart
'Shoes on the Danube' - a memorial to 20,000 Jews - tells one of the many stories of Budapest, Hungary.

'Shoes on the Danube' - a memorial to 20,000 Jews - tells one of the many stories of Budapest, Hungary.Credit: Alamy

Budapest may be the Queen of the Danube, but she is an exotic kind of queen, with a distinctive charisma and an eclectic style, born of her Magyar heritage.

On first meeting, part of the allure is her cultural abundance and absolute beauty, apparent in her eclectic architecture. It ranges from Roman to neo-Gothic to Renaissance, but is most flamboyant in the fine art nouveau buildings with their traditional facades bedecked with folk motifs and Zsolnay ceramics.

First-time visitors naturally flock to the Gothic-style Fishermen's Bastion, Hungarian Parliament and 14th-century Matthias Church, the Baroque-style Szechenyi thermal baths, Buda Castle, the 19th-century illuminated Szechenyi Chain Bridge and the city's oldest, largest indoor market, an art form in itself, the Great Market Hall.

Cherry and walnut strudel, just one version of the tasty treat.

Cherry and walnut strudel, just one version of the tasty treat.Credit: Alamy

But when you return, as you will if you can, you will find that Budapest lends itself to a much more detailed inspection. Up the boulevards, around quiet corners, into the hills is a city of great complexity.

Tourist attractions should never be simply about the visual – grand castles or interesting buildings. Lesser-known places of interest, bearing significant stories illustrate the city too, often with great impact.

On the edge of the Danube, near the Hungarian parliament on the Pest side and facing the current, are 60 cast iron pairs of shoes. They are the "Shoes on the Danube", a memorial to the 20,000 Jews who were stripped naked in the freezing winter of 1944, and murdered.

Cast iron signs on the long stone bench behind the sculpture state in Hungarian, Hebrew and English: "To the memory of the victims shot into the Danube by Arrow Cross militiamen in 1944-45. Erected 16 April 2005."

In contrast, the interesting labyrinth of six courtyards and seven attached original buildings of the Gozsdu Courtyard (Gozsdu Udvar) were part of the 1944-1945 Jewish Ghetto.

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Gozsdu Udvar's transformation is testament both to dark history as well as resilience. Before the war, almost 200,000 Jews lived in Budapest. Only 100,000 remained at liberation and the about 110,000 Budapest Jews today represent one of Europe's most significant Jewish communities.

Gozsdu Udvar, once abandoned, has been transformed into a lively conglomeration of bars, cafes, galleries, restaurants and workshops, art exhibitions, concerts and fairs plus the Gozsdu Bazaar, an open-air Sunday market from March to October. A craft market runs on Saturday afternoons.

Having said that, the Holocaust Memorial Centre in an adjoining new wing of the Pava Synagogue is worth visiting. The award-winning architect has used distortion and asymmetry to represent that murderous time.

Another dark part of Budapest history is found in Memento Park on Budapest's outskirts, where 42 brutal Cold War art works have been gathered from the 1945 to 1989 communist era. These works once dominated the graceful squares of Budapest.

It is a fine example of the complexity of Budapest politics that such tyrannical representations instead provide insights and strengthen commitment to democracy.

Furious-looking monumental statues march and pose grandly, communist "heroes", Red Army soldiers, and grand allegorical monuments to "Hungarian-Soviet Friendship", represent the worst excesses of dictatorship.

Witness Square features what remains of Budapest's largest communist-era statue of Stalin. During the 1956 revolution, the statue was knocked down. Only his boots remain, now standing alone on their pedestal.

There are guided tours and an 11am direct bus from the city's Deak Square.

Another lesser-experienced piece of Budapest is Gellert Hill, once the home of a six-metre-tall, crazy-eyed Soviet soldier now residing in Memento Park. Up there still is Liberty Statue, which commemorated the Soviet liberation of Hungary, but now commemorates lives lost to Hungary's independence, freedom and prosperity.

It's a fair walk up to the plateau, but the views are astounding. Also up there is a World War II museum inside the 1851-era fortified Citadella. Take a picnic.

If walking for a view doesn't appeal, take the historic 1870 UNESCO World Heritage Buda Hill Funicular leaving from the Buda end of the Chain Bridge. Destroyed during World War II, it has been meticulously rebuilt.

Don't forget Margaret Island, historic Budapest Zoo, with its Zsolnay-tiled elephant house, the neo-Renaissance Hungarian State Opera House, not just for a stickybeak but also for surprisingly cheap opera tickets (though closed until 2019 for renovations), and from Budapest local Roland Holzer, executive chef of my hotel, the Kempinski Hotel Corvinus, a strudel recommendation.

Roland tips Normafa, near the highest point of the Buda Hills. You can hike the forest trails or ride the 11-kilometre Children's Railway. Then there's the strudel bar, Normafa Retes Bufe, which has turned out the treat for 39 years.

TRIP NOTES

MORE

traveller.com.au/budapest

FLY

Singapore Airlines flies daily to Budapest and Amsterdam from Sydney and Melbourne. See singaporeair.com

CRUISE

APT's Magnificent Europe 15-day River Cruise Amsterdam-Budapest and reverse costs $6995 per person with a Fly Free deal or Fly Business Class deal for $2995. Tours operate from March to December. For more information, see aptouring.com.au or call 1300 196 420.

Alison Stewart was a guest of APT

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