Király utca: The King's Street Between Two Districts
Why is it significant?
Stand on the pavement of Király utca and look along it in both directions. Two- and three-storey houses from the early nineteenth century lean shoulder to shoulder with grand apartment blocks of 1900, design shops, bakeries, the odd closed-up gateway.
Key Facts
| Place | Király utca: The King's Street Between Two Districts |
|---|---|
| Address | Király utca 47, 1077 Budapest, Hungary |
| Geo Coordinates | 47.50140, 19.06260 |
| Part of Walk | Three Synagogues and a Tree of Life: Budapest's Jewish Quarter from Gozsdu to Dohány Street |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand on the pavement of Király utca and look along it in both directions. Two- and three-storey houses from the early nineteenth century lean shoulder to shoulder with grand apartment blocks of 1900, design shops, bakeries, the odd closed-up gateway. It is not a pretty street, exactly... it is a street that has always been working.
To understand why there is a Jewish quarter here at all, picture the old walled town of Pest, ending more or less where the ring boulevard runs today. For a long time Jews were not permitted to live inside it. From the 1780s, under Emperor Joseph II, they were allowed to settle in Pest, and many did so just outside the walls, in this new suburb. Király utca became their high street: cloth merchants, tailors, furriers, coffee houses, prayer rooms up in the courtyards.
Here is a detail almost nobody notices. In 1882 the growing suburb of Terézváros was split in two, and the new half was named Erzsébetváros, after Queen Elisabeth, the empress everyone called Sisi. The line between the districts was drawn down the middle of this street. So the houses on one side belong to the sixth district and those on the other to the seventh, facing each other across a few metres of cobbles and tarmac.
In the winter of 1944 the street mattered in a far darker way, because the northern edge of the ghetto ran along it, through its courtyards and gateways. A few metres could decide who was locked in and who was not. After the war many survivors left, and under communism the quarter slowly crumbled, its courtyards neglected, its shops nationalised.
Since the 1990s Király utca has come back to life, first with furniture and design shops, then with cafés. Look up at the facades as well as the windows... the street is still a catalogue of two centuries. Now walk back to the corner of Kazinczy utca and turn south down it. Halfway along the block, an unusual facade rises between the apartment houses.