Tabán Park: The Vanished Quarter
Why is it significant?
Stand on the grassy slope and turn slowly: Castle Hill and its palace on one side, the rocky face of Gellért Hill on the other, and between them lawns, old trees and a few paths. At the corner below rises a yellow Baroque church with a tall tower. It is a lovely park.
Key Facts
| Place | Tabán Park: The Vanished Quarter |
|---|---|
| Address | Tabán park, Attila út, 1013 Budapest, Hungary |
| Geo Coordinates | 47.49150, 19.04100 |
| Part of Walk | Hot Springs and a Hilltop: Budapest's Tabán, Gellért Hill and the Thermal Baths |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand on the grassy slope and turn slowly: Castle Hill and its palace on one side, the rocky face of Gellért Hill on the other, and between them lawns, old trees and a few paths. At the corner below rises a yellow Baroque church with a tall tower. It is a lovely park. It is also the ghost of a whole town.
For centuries, this slope was the Tabán, a riverside quarter of Buda packed with small houses, crooked lanes, wine taverns and workshops. After the Ottomans were driven out in 1686, many of the settlers were Serbs, whom Hungarians called Rác, and the area was long known as the Rác town. The name Tabán is often traced to a Turkish word for tanners, who needed the water of the springs and the river... though, as with many old names, scholars still argue.
By the nineteenth century, the Tabán had become Budapest's bohemian corner. Painters came for the crooked roofs, writers for the taverns, and the novelist Gyula Krúdy filled his books with its smoky wine cellars and gypsy violins. People from Pest crossed the river on summer evenings just to drink a glass of Buda red on a wooden bench under the vines.
But the picturesque lanes had no proper sewers, the houses were damp and crowded, and the city decided the quarter was a health hazard. In the 1930s almost the whole of the Tabán was demolished. A modern district was planned in its place, but war came, and it was never built. What survived are a handful of buildings: the church of Saint Catherine below you, and the old Stag House on Szarvas tér near the bridge.
So nature won by default. Today this is where the neighbourhood sledges in winter, sunbathes in spring and lies on the grass at open-air concerts in summer, on top of the cellars of a quarter that vanished less than a hundred years ago. Walk down the slope towards the river, to a little garden at the foot of the great white bridge, where a queen sits in bronze.