Jubilee Park on Gellért Hill
Why is it significant?
The path brings you down into a terraced garden: lawns stepping down the slope, flowerbeds, benches under pines and lime trees, and through the branches glimpses of the southern districts of Buda. After the crowds at the statue, it is suddenly quiet enough to hear the birds.
Key Facts
| Place | Jubilee Park on Gellért Hill |
|---|---|
| Address | Jubileumi park, 1118 Budapest, Hungary |
| Geo Coordinates | 47.48540, 19.04390 |
| Part of Walk | Hot Springs and a Hilltop: Budapest's Tabán, Gellért Hill and the Thermal Baths |
| Generated | Generated |
The path brings you down into a terraced garden: lawns stepping down the slope, flowerbeds, benches under pines and lime trees, and through the branches glimpses of the southern districts of Buda. After the crowds at the statue, it is suddenly quiet enough to hear the birds.
This is the Jubilee Park, laid out in the 1960s for an anniversary of the end of the Second World War, which is where the name comes from. But the slope has a much older story. For centuries, the sunny sides of Gellért Hill were covered in vineyards. Buda was famous for its red wine, and the vine-dressers lived down in the Tabán, where you started.
Then, in the 1880s, a tiny insect arrived: phylloxera, the aphid that destroyed vineyards across Europe. The vines of Gellért Hill died, and they were never really replanted. Within a generation, the city's wine hill had become a hill of villas, gardens and parks... and the taverns of the Tabán had to bring their wine from elsewhere.
Look closely where the rock breaks through the grass. Gellért Hill is an island of dry, sun-baked dolomite, and on its warm slopes grow plants of the Pannonian steppe, some of them protected, that you would not expect in a capital city. Lizards sun themselves on the stones, and in spring the hillside is full of wildflowers. Generations of Budapest children learned to sledge on these slopes, and lovers have always found the benches up here.
This is also the point where you start to feel what the springs at the foot of the hill really mean. All that warm water you saw at the Rudas started as rain falling on hills like this one, soaking into the rock beneath your feet. Now find your way down to Kelenhegyi út, the winding road that descends towards the river, past villas and gardens, to the entrance of a great Art Nouveau bath.