Döbrentei tér, Queen Elisabeth & Elisabeth Bridge
Why is it significant?
In the little garden by the bridgehead, a slender woman sits in bronze, wrapped in a long dress, her hands in her lap and a faint smile on her face. Above her, the white cables of Elisabeth Bridge sweep across the Danube to Pest. The queen and the bridge carry the same name.
Key Facts
| Place | Döbrentei tér, Queen Elisabeth & Elisabeth Bridge |
|---|---|
| Address | Döbrentei tér, 1013 Budapest, Hungary |
| Geo Coordinates | 47.49070, 19.04590 |
| Part of Walk | Hot Springs and a Hilltop: Budapest's Tabán, Gellért Hill and the Thermal Baths |
| Generated | Generated |
In the little garden by the bridgehead, a slender woman sits in bronze, wrapped in a long dress, her hands in her lap and a faint smile on her face. Above her, the white cables of Elisabeth Bridge sweep across the Danube to Pest. The queen and the bridge carry the same name.
She is Elisabeth, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary, Sisi to the world. Hungarians loved her because she loved them back: she learned Hungarian, surrounded herself with Hungarian ladies, rode at Gödöllő and supported the Compromise of 1867 that made her husband Franz Joseph king of Hungary. When an Italian anarchist stabbed her with a sharpened file in Geneva in 1898, the mourning here was enormous.
The statue is by György Zala, the sculptor of the angel on Heroes' Square. It was first unveiled in 1932 on the other side of the river, near the Pest end of the bridge. The communist authorities removed it in the early 1950s, and only in 1986 was she brought back, this time to the Buda side, among the trees.
The bridge has its own story of loss. The first Elisabeth Bridge, opened in 1903, was a chain bridge whose single span was among the longest in the world at the time. In January 1945 retreating German troops blew up every bridge across the Danube in Budapest, and this one fell into the river. It was the only one not rebuilt in its original form. Its slim white successor, a cable suspension bridge, opened in 1964 on the old piers.
Stand at the railing and look at the hill above the bridgehead: a cliff of grey rock, and halfway up, a bronze bishop raising a cross. Before climbing to meet him, walk a short way south along the foot of the hill, to a low building with a dome where steam has risen for more than four hundred years.