Batthyány tér: The Market Hall and the Best View of Parliament
Why is it significant?
Walk to the river side of Batthyány tér and look across the Danube. There it is: the Parliament, its whole length laid out in front of you like a stage set, towers, arches and that great dome, nearly two hundred and seventy metres of Gothic lace sitting on the water.
Key Facts
| Place | Batthyány tér: The Market Hall and the Best View of Parliament |
|---|---|
| Address | Batthyány tér 5, 1011 Budapest, Hungary |
| Geo Coordinates | 47.50680, 19.03780 |
| Part of Walk | Water Town Secrets: Budapest's Víziváros from Batthyány tér to Gül Baba's Rose Garden |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk to the river side of Batthyány tér and look across the Danube. There it is: the Parliament, its whole length laid out in front of you like a stage set, towers, arches and that great dome, nearly two hundred and seventy metres of Gothic lace sitting on the water. From the Pest side you can never quite see it whole. From here you see nothing else.
The square carries the name of Count Lajos Batthyány, who became Hungary's first prime minister of a responsible government in the spring of 1848. When the revolution and the war of independence were crushed, the Austrians put him on trial, and on 6 October 1849 he was shot by a firing squad in Pest, on the same day that thirteen Hungarian generals were executed at Arad. Hungary still remembers that date every year as a day of national mourning.
Now turn back towards the brick hall on the western side of the square. It is one of the covered market halls that Budapest built around 1900, when the city decided to move its food trade off the muddy open squares and under iron and glass. And next to it stands one of the old baroque coaching inns of the Water Town, the White Cross. Legend insists that the great seducer Casanova once slept there... nobody has ever proved it, and nobody in Víziváros wants to.
Under your feet the city goes on working. Since 1972 the red metro line has run beneath this square and straight under the Danube to Pest, and the suburban railway sets off from here towards Szentendre, the old painters' town to the north.
Now head north along Fő utca. After a few minutes you will pass Nagy Imre tér and a long, grey institutional building on your left. Behind those walls, in June 1958, Imre Nagy, the prime minister of the 1956 revolution, was tried in secret and sentenced to death; he was hanged on 16 June. Walk on past it in silence, and look for low domes rising behind a wall a little further on.