Kossuth Lajos tér: The Bullets of 25 October 1956
Why is it significant?
Walk close to the wall of the Ministry of Agriculture and let your eyes drift across the stone. Set into it are small dark metal balls, dozens of them, scattered at head height and above. Each one sits in a hole that was made by a bullet.
Key Facts
| Place | Kossuth Lajos tér: The Bullets of 25 October 1956 |
|---|---|
| Address | Kossuth Lajos tér 11, 1055 Budapest, Hungary |
| Geo Coordinates | 47.50640, 19.04800 |
| Part of Walk | Crown, Dome and River: Budapest's Parliament, St Stephen's Basilica & the Danube Bank |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk close to the wall of the Ministry of Agriculture and let your eyes drift across the stone. Set into it are small dark metal balls, dozens of them, scattered at head height and above. Each one sits in a hole that was made by a bullet.
On 23 October 1956 a student demonstration grew into a revolution against the communist regime and Soviet control. That evening a huge crowd filled this square and called for Imre Nagy, the reform communist they trusted. When he finally spoke from the Parliament and began with the word comrades, the story goes, the crowd shouted back that they were not comrades any more.
Two days later, on the morning of 25 October, thousands gathered here again, peacefully. Some had walked alongside Soviet tanks whose crews seemed friendly. Then the shooting started, from the rooftops and from the armour, into a crowd that had nowhere to run. Who fired first is still argued over, and so is the number of dead: estimates range from several dozen to well over a hundred. Hungarians call it Bloody Thursday.
The revolution lasted less than three weeks. Soviet forces returned in strength on 4 November, and Imre Nagy was tried in secret and executed in 1958. In June 1989 he was reburied with honours, a ceremony that helped bring the whole system down. The symbol of those days is a national flag with a hole in the middle, where the revolutionaries cut out the communist coat of arms. Between 2012 and 2014 the square was rebuilt to look as it did before the war, and a small underground memorial to the massacre was opened beneath it.
So look again at the metal spheres. Nobody filled the holes with mortar... the city chose to keep the wounds and mark them. Now walk back towards the river, cross to the embankment, and follow the water south. The next memorial sits right at the edge of the Danube, and it needs almost no words.