Patrick Bade
Cultural Overview of Budapest, Part 1
Patrick Bade - Cultural Overview of Budapest, Part 1
- What we’re going to do today is take a half-day boat ride from Vienna along the Danube to Budapest, and we’ll be in Budapest this week, both sessions. And to get you straightaway into the mood, I’m going to play you some music by Kodaly, which has the characteristic inflexions of Hungarian music, but also the Hungarian language, which is a very special language. There’s a distant relationship, apparently, with Finnish, but really it’s almost unique. It’s unlike any other language with, as I said, very characteristic inflexions. Now, for those of you still joining us, that music was by the Hungarian composer Kodaly. And you will have noticed also what is, pretty well, the Hungarian national instrument, the cimbalom, and I will be talking more about that instrument next time on Sunday. Budapest is the second of the four capital cities that are on the River Danube, which was, I suppose, the most important highway through Europe, right up to the development of the railway system in the middle of the 19th century. And what makes Budapest so different, at least very, very different from Vienna, is the fact that this great river goes through the very heart of the city. The Danube skates round the edge of the old city of Vienna. And Budapest is, of course, actually two cities. In the image you see on the screen, you’ve got Buda on its hills on the right hand side and Pest on the flat plane on the left hand side. I think that’s one of the things that makes Budapest so fascinating is the contrast between the two halves of the city.
They were only joined by bridge as late as 1849. It was quite a business to get across this wide, fast-moving river, from Pest to Buda and back again. And here we are on the heights of Buda, looking down on Pest. Here once again, we’re on Buda looking at Pest, across the first bridge to be constructed in Budapest, the Szechenyi Chain Bridge, and I’ll be talking more about that in a minute. And here we are in Pest, looking up at Buda, the Royal Palace of Buda. So we’re sort of whizzing backwards and forwards here. Again, top of Buda looking down onto the Parliament Building in Pest. And this is a photograph I took on my last visit to Budapest, which was about three years ago, looking down on the Chain Bridge. Now Buda is, of course, the old part of the city, and it’s very much like any little central European town. Although it was very, very badly damaged in the second World War, it’s been pretty well constructed, and you have a sense of it being a dense old city with quite narrow streets and low built constructed buildings. You don’t have many jewel buildings in the old part of Buda. And it’s a mediaeval and a Baroque city. Most of the houses actually have mediaeval foundations, mediaeval cellars. You can see these are 18th, very charming, stuccoed 18th century buildings. This is a typical street in Buda on the top of the hill. And these buildings, I think one can see in the gates that they go back to the 16th century or earlier, even though the surface may look 18th century.
And then we’re in another world when we go down to Pest. Pest is, of course, the Paris of central Europe, with great, straight, wide avenues. This is Andrassy Street, which is the sort of Champs-Elysees of Budapest. We’ve got the Opera House on the left hand side. Looking down Andrassy Street again. Now, I suppose what first attracted people to this area, well, were two things. One is, of course, the strategic importance of Buda. If you’re on the heights of Buda, you can control the Danube, so that was very important. But the other thing was the hot, the thermal springs. These are on the Buda side. And here are the Szechenyi Baths. These were known to the Romans. And there was an important, this is, I think, the Gellert Baths, and there were important Roman settlements here. This was, of course, the eastern extent of the Roman Empire. But on the Buda side, there have been major excavations and there are plenty of Roman finds. If you go to the National Museum, you can find beautiful mosaic floors and Roman funerary monuments. Now, after the fall of the Roman Empire, the next really great event in Hungarian history was the arrival of these terrifying tribesmen, the Magyars. They arrived in what is now Hungary in 892.
This is the Millennium Monument, commemorating 1,000 years of Magyar in Hungary. And they’re famous for two things, their brilliant horsemanship, well, certainly their fierce warrior character, brilliant horsemanship, and their wonderful moustaches. And I think Budapest must be the moustache capital of Europe, if not the world. As you go around the city, you’ll see an awful lot of pretty monumental, amazing moustaches on the buildings. And in the National Museum, this is an 18th century portrait, of an 18th century Hungarian aristocrat, called Count Kalnoky Antal. And in many ways, he looks like a typical 18th century aristocrat to be found anywhere in Europe. He’s wearing a powdered wig, as a French aristocrat would’ve done in the mid 18th century. But you wouldn’t have found a French aristocrat wearing a moustache like this. So even in these periods when moustaches were out of fashion with aristocratic men in Europe, the Hungarians zealously maintained their spectacular moustaches. Now, the golden age of Hungary is in the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, so from the 14th century to the early 16th century, particularly the reign of Louis the Great, where you can see that the kingdom of Hungary extends right down to the Adriatic. And that, of course, brought Hungary in very direct contact with Italy, which is the primary source of Western civilization, the Renaissance, in the late Middle Ages, in the 14th, 15th, and early 16th century. This is what Buda looked like around about 1500 up on its hill.
And if you go to the National Museum, you can find evidence of the wealth and sophistication of the city of Buda in this time. This is a very beautiful mediaeval crown. Of course, in England, we don’t have any mediaeval crowns. They were all melted down by Cromwell in the 17th century. So this is something very rare and precious. And as an example of exquisite craftsmanship, these are saddles made out of ivory in the 15th century. And this is astonishing, this is intarsia. Intarsia is an Italian technique of wood inlay. This dates from the very beginning of the 16th century, presumably made by Italian craftsman who would’ve been imported to Hungary. And certainly, it makes me aware, as a British person, of how backward England was at the same time. You would not have found anything of this level of sophistication or craftsmanship in England in the beginning of the 16th century. But of course, all that comes to a violent and terrible halt with the invasion of the Ottomans. And they, as you can see from this map, the Ottomans swallow up the largest part of Hungary. There is a vestige of the old Hungary along the top row of Hungary, and of course the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or the Habsburg Empire rather, which is swallowing up the western part of Hungary.
And the Turks are there for well over 100 years, from 1547 to 1686. And the most spectacular monuments left by the Turks in Budapest are these very beautiful 16th century baths, bath complexes. This is the Rudas Bath, dating from 1556. So this long period of Turkish occupation certainly left traces, I would say, in the Hungarian cultural DNA, particularly the decorative arts, a love of very elaborate, gorgeous decoration. And again, in the Hungarian National Museum, there’s a whole section of Turkish art and arts and crafts. These are Turkish objects from that collection. Even after the Turks have gone, it’s a particular type of very elaborate decoration that, as I said, is part of the Hungarian DNA. These are, for instance, pieces made in the 17th and 18th century, so after the departure of the Ottomans. And these, these are really extraordinary. These are mid 18th century aristocratic costumes. The shapes and the forms are, again, quite similar to what you might find in France, Germany, or England in the period, but not the decoration. The decoration is very distinctively Hungarian and Ottoman influenced. Now in 1683, I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about this, the Turks overreached themselves. I suspect that Mr. Putin has made the same mistake. I rather hope he has anyway. So they invaded Central Europe, and they tried to take Vienna, and of course they failed.
And after that they fell back, and it was only another three years before Buda was retaken. It was an extremely violent and a bloody siege. Terrible to think we’re still witnessing this kind of siege, this terrible siege warfare, and fighting in cities in this day and age. Not surprisingly, the people who came off worst in the taking of Budapest were the local Jewish population. Well, as you probably know well by now, when in doubt, always blame the Jews, and the Christians blamed the Jews for being too cosy with the Ottoman Turks. So in the 18th century, Budapest is a backwater. It’s prosperous, it’s peaceable, but it’s a backwater of the Ottoman Empire. And the chief architectural results of this period are these great late Baroque churches. This is the Anna, this church is in Anna on the left, and the University Church on the right. And they’re very similar to churches that you will find all over South Germany and Austria, gorgeous Baroque interiors, lots of little frolicking cherubs on the organ, wonderful, these pulpits always so spectacular in these middle European and German Baroque churches, with lots of dancing figures, and clamouring figures, and lots of legs, dangling legs. Another big leap, as I said, the Hungarians, it’s just a rather quiet backwater of the Ottoman Empire. But in the 19th century, after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, you find the rise of nationalism everywhere in Europe. And all the different ethnic minorities increasingly aspiring to nationhood. And this is Lajos Kossuth, photograph in the middle and a lithographic image on the left.
And he was the, well, I suppose the Zelensky of his day. He was a national leader who led the Hungarian Revolution, rebellion against Ottoman, Habsburg rule in 1848. And for a short time, he was successful. It really looked like Hungary would achieve independence and nationhood. The new Habsburg Empire, Franz Josef, he was able to reassert Habsburg power, and Hungary was suppressed once again. The situation changes radically in 1866 when the Austrians fall into the trap of the wily Bismarck, and they find themselves at war with the Prussians. Well, the Ottoman Empire was vastly bigger than the Kingdom of Prussia. And the Austrians were very proud of their army. It was real sort of state of the art army. In the end, the Prussians were victorious at the Battle of Koniggratz in 1866. They had superior weapons, superior discipline, and the Austrian army was absolutely massacred. These terrible images by the German artist Adolph von Menzel of the victims of the battle of Koniggratz. But surprisingly, Franz Josef proved to be wise and flexible, and he understood that the Habsburg Empire needed to change and it needed to adapt to the new circumstances. He gave up Habsburg aspirations to hegemony in the German-speaking world. It was from this point the Prussians take over. And as you know, Germany is united under Prussian leadership, just four years later in 1871.
But this is the ceremony in Budapest where Franz Josef, in effect, grants Hungary home rule, and it becomes a kingdom within the Habsburg Empire. And this is the beginning of the so-called dual monarchy. So Franz Josef, he’s emperor of the Habsburg Empire, but he’s king of Hungary, and Elizabeth there is his queen. And this is the ceremony where this was enacted in 1867. Now it’s around about this time that Budapest really takes off, in terms of industrialization and economy. And it becomes one of the great boom towns of the world, along with Berlin and Chicago. I think Chicago is the city that expands most rapidly in the third part of the 19th century, followed by Berlin and Budapest. And Budapest is really the engine of the modernization, industrialization of the Habsburg Empire. And the symbol of that is the Szechenyi Chain Bridge, which was actually constructed by a Scottish engineer called William Clark. This was a tremendous feat of engineering, to make a bridge that could span this very wide and fast-moving river. Took 10 years to construct, from 1839 to 1849, and it’s followed, there was not another bridge until 1901. This is the Elizabeth Bridge, which was the second bridge across the Danube in Budapest, completed in 1901. Railways, of course, transformed everything. Railways are, I’ve said this so often, the 19th century equivalent of the internet. They completely transform the economies and the cultures of the Western world. And this is the Western Railway Station. There are several big railway stations in Budapest. And they invited, again, a foreign engineer, August de Serres, who was an associate of Eiffel, to build this beautiful station, which luckily survived the second World War, and it’s still there, stunning building.
Budapest is now flexing its muscles, and it wants to be one of the big boys. And if you are a big boy amongst the great cities of the world in the 19th century, you must have an Exposition Universelle, a World Exhibition. London was the first, 1851. Paris had them regularly after 1855. We heard about Vienna staging a World Exhibition in 1873. So Budapest felt, yes, we must get in on the act. And they had their world exhibition in 1885. And here, this is the exhibition area in 1885. And also, the Hungarians are immensely ambitious, they’re proud, they really want to assert themselves, and they’re very keen to construct big, iconic, monumental buildings that express the new power and prosperity of Budapest. I suppose you have to describe them as rather bombastic buildings, in the way of 19th century Historicist buildings. But they’re very extraordinary. And two of the most impressive are the Saint Stephen’s Cathedral and the Opera House. And they’re both the work of the architect Miklos Ybl. Here is Saint Stephen’s Cathedral with its dome that dominates Pest. And you can see that actually Ybl has taken a leaf out of the book of Christopher Wren and Saint Paul’s Cathedral, who wanted a dome high enough so it would be seen for miles around and would dominate the city, but was worried that, if you go into the church and you look up into a dome that high, you are going to feel that you are looking up a tunnel. So in fact, you’ve got a double dome.
You have the exterior dome, which is much higher than the interior dome. And here is the construction of the dome of Saint Stephen’s. Saint Stephen, incredibly rich inside. Every inch of surface is either gilded, or it’s precious marbles, or it’s mosaic. And this is the most important shrine, which is the reliquary that contains the arm of Saint Stephen, who’s the patron saint of Hungary. Ybl also constructed a royal palace on the hill of Buda. On the left is what it looked like before it was largely destroyed in the battle for Budapest at the end of the second World War. It was never really a functional royal palace. His masterpiece though, for me, is definitely the Budapest Opera House. Again, a great opera house was a prestige symbol. It’s funny that the only city that really didn’t try to build a very prestigious, magnificent sort of wedding cake opera house was London. And people always used to rather sneer at the fact that the Royal Opera House, Covent Gardens, is a very modest building compared with Budapest, or Vienna, or Paris, or Brussels, or almost any other European opera house. It was hemmed in by the fruit and vegetable market. And it was a kind of joke that the richest aristocracy in the world, the British aristocracy, going to the Opera house, had to pick their way over rotting vegetables. Well, not here, and obviously not in Paris. The Budapest Opera House is on the grandest avenue of Budapest, Andrassy Avenue. When the money was needed for this, Franz Josef had to give his permission for the construction of this opera house. And he was worried that the Hungarians were really getting too uppity.
So he said yes, he gave his permission, but on condition that the building had to be smaller than the Vienna Opera House. Well, it may be smaller, but I think it’s much more beautiful. This doesn’t really give justice, do justice to how beautiful this house is. And it’s not only beautiful and sumptuous, it really works. Has a wonderful acoustic, it had really effective, for its time, quite remarkable systems for heating, and ventilation, and so on. And it’s been closed, I think, for three or four years. They’re doing a major refurbishment. But I hope it will open soon. And I look forward very, very much to seeing operas in this beautiful house once again. This is the staircase, as I said, I think it’s much more harmonious, much more beautiful than the opera house in Vienna. And of course it’s had a very distinguished history with a number of very great conductors, including Gustav Mahler, who was chief of the Budapest Opera between 1876 and 1884. It was actually while he was in Budapest that he premiered his first symphony. It was premiered in this building, the Vigado Concert Hall on the banks of the Danube. And I’m going to give you a few little musical examples now. There’ll be more music next week. I’m going to be talking about Bartok, and Kodaly, and Kalman. But this is Ferenc Erkel. As you can see, in Hungary, you always put the surname first and the first name second. So this is Erkel Ferenc, and this is his statue outside the Opera House. And he may not be a very familiar name to you. His opera, “Bank Ban” is considered to be the National Opera of Hungary. That was another very typical night.
I’m going to be talking about that in a couple of weeks time when we’re going to talk about nationalism and struggle for liberty and so on, how every country in Europe, every aspiring nation in the 19th century, had to have its national opera on a national epic historic theme. “Bank Ban” is still done in Hungary. It’s almost never done anywhere else. But I’m going to play you an aria. Of course, it’s the usual story with a patriotic hero. And this is the aria of “Bank Ban.” Ban means viceroy, Bank is a name. For non-Hungarians, I suppose the Hungarian National Opera is Bartok. Bartok would be, for us, the most greatest, most important Hungarian composer in the first half of the 20th century. And whereas “Bank Ban,” as I said, is never done outside, or almost never outside of Hungary, Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle” is standard repertoire and it’s done everywhere. And this was first performed in, I think, was it 19, yes, 1918. And here’s a little taste of Bartok’s “Bluebeard’s Castle.” On the left you can see Bartok seated with the original cast of 1918. That was Bluebeard’s seventh and last wife becoming increasingly hysterical and opening the final door to the dungeon where she’s going to be imprisoned. There have been a lot of great Hungarian singers. And in the interwar period, these four singers were known collectively as the Hungarian Quartet.
They were immensely popular in Budapest itself, but they also sang a lot in Vienna and other European opera houses. There’s the soprano Maria Nemeth top left, the tenor Koloman von Pataky in the middle, the baritone Alexander Sved, who then, after the war, went onto New York and the Metropolitan, and the wonderful mezzo Rosette Anday. And I’m going to play you a little bit of both of them. Here is Rosette Anday, and she has an interesting story. She was Jewish, she was loved, she was immensely, immensely popular, in Vienna as well as Budapest. And she continued to sing, well she stopped singing after the Anschluss in Vienna. But somehow or other, she survived the German occupation of Hungary, and she continued her career after the war. I’m going to play you just a short excerpt from an aria from “Idomeneo,” not an opera that was done very much at the time. And it’s a spectacular piece of singing, really amazing, virtuosic, florid singing from a big-voiced mezzo. And I do have to play a little bit of Maria Nemeth after she, the long-suffering Nemeth, if you remember in my last talk, she was singing “Aida” to a rather confused Gigli. She’s singing in German and he’s singing in Italian. And I also played you a little bit of her singing her “Aida” to the young Bjorling, who only knew the part in Swedish. So here she is singing, and very beautifully and very delicately, a solo from “Il Trovatore,” oh no, it’s not, it’s “Aida,” sorry, “Aida” Nile Aria. As you can hear, she could sing it in Italian as well. Now this is surely the most spectacular building in Budapest and one of the most spectacular buildings in Europe. This is the Hungarian Parliament Building by an architect called Imre Steindl. And it’s constructed between 1885 and 1904.
When I first went to Budapest, I had a guidebook, and it said this was a copy of the House of Parliament in London. No it isn’t, not at all, nor is it an imitation of the House of Parliament in London. It may have taken the House of Parliament in London as its initial inspiration, but wow, this is really something, this building. It’s much bigger, for a start, from the House of Parliament. And yes, it’s in a kind of neo-Gothic style, but that’s it, really. This is a highly original, an absolutely extraordinary building. And if you go to Budapest, you must do a tour of it. Again, you feel this is a big prestige project. They wanted to make sure that no expense was spared. The gold that’s really dense, rich gold leaf, precious materials, the scale of the building. I don’t think it’s just a bombastic building, actually very refined building. This is the Crown of Hungary, which is still there, and always guarded by Hungarian soldiers. And here you can see the chamber where all the deputies speak. And this is an example of the incredible attention to detail throughout the building. In the chamber, there was a smoking ban, but of course, the deputies, they didn’t want to waste their cigars, so these are racks outside the chamber where they could leave their half-smoked cigars and retrieve them after the debate. Another very spectacular 19th century building in Budapest is the Grand Synagogue, which I think is the biggest synagogue, still the biggest synagogue in Europe. And this is by a German architect called Ludwig Forster, who was actually not Jewish, but he made a specialty of building synagogues in Orientalist style.
As Jews assimilated in the 19th century, and as they became more prosperous, there was a need for synagogues to be built throughout Western Europe. There are very spectacular ones built around the same time in Paris, Brussels, Vienna, and most German cities. I think this is a very beautiful building and a very moving building. So again, I think it should be higher up your list of places to go when you go to Budapest. And it’s a symbol of the power and wealth of the Jewish community in Budapest. I believe the city, I think I heard Judy say that it was, a third of the city was Jewish at this point. And it was attracting Jews from all of the Austria Empire, like a magnet, ‘cause it was a place where you could really make it, if you had the ambition and you were prepared to work hard. Here is the interior of that synagogue, and there’s a photograph of Theodor Herzl leaving it after a service. Now we’re in Pest now, rather than Buda. Pest is, apart from the University Church, which is 18th century, most of Pest is second half of the 19th century. My guess is there are more Italian palazzi in Pest than there are in Venice, Florence, or any Italian city. This became the norm. The architectural norm was the palazzo, the Italian Renaissance palazzo format. Just as say, in London, the terrace is the standard format for most buildings in London. This is the, you can see it’s the facade of the Model School of Design, it’s on Andrassy Avenue. This is the design for it. This is the building as it was constructed. And that’s what it looks like today. And it’s got this Italian sgraffito decoration on the facade. So I think this is the Post Office Savings Building, is it, what is it, Railway Pensions Office, rather.
That’s also looking like a palazzo. So this is the photograph I took on a visit to Budapest. And I was staying in a very, it was a very cheap hotel, but it was actually very, very nice. I had quite a large, really apartment to myself. And it was in one of these 19th century palazzo-style apartment buildings. And so I thought this is an interesting photograph here, 'cause it shows you they’re all built round courtyards. I had to walk across the courtyard to get to my room in this building. This extraordinary, crazy building, I suppose it’s a bit sort of Disneyland-esque really. This was built for the Millennium Exhibition. Millennium Exhibition was in 1892. And it was again, to celebrate 1,000 years since the arrival of the Magyar. And this absolutely insane building, here it is in aerial view, it combines almost every historical style you can think of, from Romanesque through to Rococo. And it’s amazing that it still stands. I’m going to finish today with a little fantasy that Wendy is going to find a time machine for us, and that we can, or we can have a group visit from the listeners to Lockdown University, to go back to Budapest in this golden period before the first World War. Of course, we’d want to indulge in these wonderful, luxurious baths. These are the Szechenyi Baths, which were such an attraction of the city in the period.
This is Andrassy Avenue. This is the Budapest, the first line, line one, of the Budapest Metro system, which was the first underground system in any continental European city. It beat the French, I think, by about four or five years. Paris was the next one. But it follows the same system as the Paris Metro, which is that, of course, in Pest itself, didn’t work in Buda, but in Pest, because it was a relatively new city with straight, wide avenues, you could just dig up the avenues, and you could construct the tunnels, fairly shallow tunnels, underneath the surface of the boulevards. And that’s the same in Paris. Course it’s different in London where there are much deeper and more claustrophobic tunnels. Here again is the Budapest Metro system, being constructed in the 1890s. A very nice rather sort of Arts and Crafts detail inside line number one. This again, line number one of the Budapest Metro system. And of course it would be nothing but the best for us. And we should certainly want to stay in the very famous Grand Hotel of Budapest. I have actually stayed two nights in that hotel. This is what it looked like around about 1900. Opened in the 1890s. First ever Grand Hotel, of course, was Paris in the 1860s, and this is very much following in the footsteps of that. That’s what it looks like today. I’ve actually eaten breakfast in this room, which has not really changed very much. It was of one of the most glamorous hotels in the world. And they have a very interesting guest book with photographs and signatures and dedications. Here, this is Gitta Alpar. She was, for a short time, a huge star. She was Hungarian Jewish. She took Berlin by storm around about 1930, but had to leave in a hurry in 1933, went to America.
Great Italian tenor, Lauri-Volpi, Maria Jericks, who I was talking about last time, American, the new glamorous stars, of course, in the 1920s were film stars. This is Rod La Rocque, and he was married to a Hungarian beauty, and very briefly, a very famous film star, this is a Vilma Banky. She hit Hollywood in the mid '20s and was one of the major stars. But she was one of the victims of the arrival of sound because her Hungarian accent was so thick that her, she couldn’t continue her career in the movies. And so here are exotic visitors to the Grand Hotel, Anna May Wong and Josephine Baker. This is the New York Cafe, that still exists. This is what it looked like at the time. This is what it looks like today. So we don’t really need a time machine for this, we could go and have some wonderful cakes there. Next time, don’t worry, I’m going to be really talking in more detail about the kind of cakes you can get in Budapest. This is Gerbeaud, which is the most famous cake cafe. And again, I will talk more about that next time. So of course we, there’ll be health reasons. Well, after all those cream cakes, we probably need some healthcare. So these, Budapest, with Vienna, was one of the leading, one of the cutting edge centres for medical treatment. This is what’s, I got a note here of what this particular treatment is called. Yes, this is the Institute of Electromagnetic Therapy. Not quite sure what it was supposed to do to you. This looks really scary, but it’s cutting edge medical treatment for 1900. And so it’s, Pest, as I said, we’re in Pest rather than Buda.
These very elegant bella-hok shopping malls. Ah, this building, this is another building which has certainly been closed. I meant to check before this lecture whether it has reopened or is about to reopen. You might wish to hold up off your next visit to Budapest until this building is open. This is the Museum of Applied Arts. This is actually really one of my favourite museums in the whole world. It’s a very, very gorgeous Art Nouveau building in itself. And this is what it looked like when it opened. And God knows what it looked like. I don’t suppose this display will look like this when it reopens, but it obviously had very, very enlightened directors when it opened. And they had deep pockets because, of course, the number one museum in the world for decorative arts is the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. But I would say the other two museums in continental Europe, to my mind, the two best museums I know of for decorative arts are the Hamburg Museum and this one. This is such a fabulous collection and it’s more manageable. V and A is so enormous, you can get lost, it’s too big. This museum has the most choice examples of everything from the Renaissance up to the Bauhaus. Sadly I really discovered it too late in my teaching career. But I thought how wonderful it would be to spend a week in Budapest and do a week-long history of the different styles in the decorative arts from Renaissance to the 20th century. And this would be the ideal place to do it because there is such good examples of all the different styles.
And wonderful bella-hok buildings. This is the Gresham Palace. You can see with this rather beautiful Art Nouveau decoration and sculpture. And it has a very nice cocktail lounge. Art Nouveau, so Art Nouveau, I’ve mentioned this many times, it’s a Belgian invention. It starts in Brussels in 1892 to 1893, and then it spreads to Paris, and it spreads from Paris to every European city. And each European city develops its own special variant of the Art Nouveau style, Vienna, Glasgow, Barcelona, and so on. But also, Budapest is a very important centre of Art Nouveau. Sometimes, with the building on the left, or the Museum of Decorative Arts, you can see the Ottoman influence in the Hungarian version of Art Nouveau. You get this wonderful building, I love the way the glass facade reflects a Baroque church opposite. This looks closer to the Franco-Belgian version of the Art Nouveau style, and this too, with the wavy, soft, melting forms, curvilinear patterns. But we also find a more rectilinear version of Art Nouveau, yugen steel. So this particular one on the right, it looks really quite Viennese. And I think I’m going to stop here. Next week, on Sunday, rather, I’m going to talk about painting, I’m going to talk about the visual arts, painting, a bit about music, as I said, and definitely eating and food in Budapest. So I’m going to come out now and I see we’ve got lots of questions.
Q&A and Comments:
1867 dual monarchy. Unless the duel was fought to secure the crown. I’m not quite sure what you’re saying there, but nevermind.
I could find the, this is Maria Eddy. She’s telling us she could find the building where she used to live near the Parliament Building, where for years, you studied in its gorgeous library.
My grandmother had embroidered cushions with flowers and birds on them that she bought in Budapest at the beginning of the 20th century, so the bridge was still pretty recent. She called one bird, Pushing Buda and the other Pest. Thank you for that.
This is Andrew Powell, “My grandmother was in the first cohort of women in Hungary to become town planners,” that is very early, “in 1920. She worked on the redesign of the road layout, leading to and from the Chain Bridge.”
City of music, this is Lindy. On Sunday mornings, museums have musicians playing in the foyers. Hidden secret of Budapest is the tiny museum. That I haven’t been to, that sounds very interesting. Tiny museum of gipsies. I will be talking about, a little bit next week about the fate of gipsies, which was, of course, appalling in the second World War.
This is Will McCarney, “There’s a style of knitting with two different colours that’s called in intarsia.” I didn’t know that. Knitting with the two colours makes the finished work look like inlaid. Where do the Magyars, well, they must come from Asia, but where they originally come from, I’m not sure. Yes, Finnish friends tell me that when they hear Hungarian, that certain words sound familiar, but it’s not similar enough for Hungarians and Fins to be able to understand one another.
Q: Did Budapest have the first underground?
A: It had the first underground to be completed in continental Europe. London had the first underground by a very, very long way.
Upstairs in the city market, one can still find high quality silk. I’m going to talk a bit about shopping next week, 'cause it is a fun city. I think shopping is a cultural activity.
Basilica, yes, I’m sure you’re right. It’s technically a basilica, not a cathedral. Don’t ask me to define the difference. Lucky you, stayed at the Gresham Palace. It is a gorgeous looking hotel. What year was, it’s probably in my notes, but the light has gone, as you can see, and I don’t think I can read my notes anymore. Why are the seats always, I suppose red is a very festive colour, and it goes very well with gold.
This is Arlene. She saw “Tristan” in the opera, lucky you. I would love to see “Tristan,” 'cause it’s such a good acoustic. I think, actually, the fact that it’s not so enormous is a real advantage.
And this is Kirk, who 25 years ago attended a performance of “Bank Ban” in Toronto, goodness, performed by Hungarian Romanian troop from Transylvania. The place was filled with the people, refugees from 1956. Not a dry eye in the house.
Q: Are there many cellars, because buildings could not be built above?
A: No, I think the cellars just, mediaeval buildings tended to have cellars. There might, I’m sure there are limits now to the height you can build, but there wouldn’t have been limits then.
To get to the big synagogue, make a booking first, not easy to get in these days, that I believe.
Specialty shops with Hungarian traditional costumes, very pricey. Thank you for your comments. Budapest, I’ve only been there, I think, four times. It’s not a city I know intimately, but I did love it. And of course, yes, that’s that beautiful Tree of Life, which is a Holocaust memorial was paid for, I think, by Tony Curtis.
Q: How come the synagogue survived the Nazis?
A: Well, the Nazis only occupied, they came into, no doubt, if they’d had time, I’m sure they would’ve got rid of it. But as the Nazis only arrived fairly late in the war, they were only there occupying Hungary for a year or a bit longer.
It’s true, but that’s not, the thing, Margaret, yes, you could have travelled for free in the underground until Brexit, and now you can’t, because it’s only for citizens of the European Union. It’s not for people from outside the European Union.
Q: How come Vienna produced so many writers and artists?
A: Well, Budapest actually did produce a lot of writers and artists. Going to talk about the artists next week. Wonderful artists who are a bit, I think, underrated. Very exciting early 20th century modern art scene. And I think there are also a great many writers. My guess is that, Franz Werfel, for instance, he was from Budapest.
I think probably many youth, because they tended to have German names, and they often wrote in the German language, that you might, there are plenty of Budapest writers that you probably think of as Viennese. Sorry, I’ve skipped something there. Paul, the Grand is magnificent. It sounds like lots of you have had very good holidays there.
This is Elie Strauss, his parents got married there and he, well, good for you to learn that difficult language. Thank you. Thank you.
Israelis can have Budapest spa treatments covered by their health funds. That’s good for them.
Name the hotel where I stayed. Oh, that was the Grand, well, I’ve stayed in different hotels in Budapest, but the Grand Hotel. There’s a movie which is filmed in that hotel. If you like Grand Hotels, it was pretty wonderful, really.
Cafe Gerbeaud, yes. founded by a Swiss patissier. I’m going to talk about that next week. Gundels, and I will also talk about Gundels, although Gundels, hmm, I think Gundels is a bit too touristy these days. It was the last couple of times I’ve eaten there. I mean, you have to go there because it’s so famous. It’s the most famous restaurant in Budapest, but it’s maybe not the best.
Gellert Hotel and Baths, this is Elie Straus, by my parents building, although the street name had changed.
Mags, first time I visited Budapest 35 years ago, the New York Cafe was open, but it was as it had been post war, it had internal scaffolding and very basic. Well, it really, I’m going to talk quite a lot about the architecture and, of course, know that Budapest was very damaged in street to street fighting, the kind of fighting I’m afraid that we’re going to see in Ukraine. Over my three or four visits, I’ve seen changes every time. I mean the first time, there was still enormous amounts of damage left over from the second World War, and in recent years, that has been repaired and is disappearing.
Q: Does anyone know of a good local Budapest historian who could help you?
A: I don’t, but I’m sure other people could.
Q: Did the Nazis and the Communists leave all the decorative arts collect?
A: Yes, I suppose they did, 'cause they’re still there, and they are wonderful, as I said.
I don’t know, I’ve been to the Gellert Baths, but I dunno what the hotel is like. I’ll talk about cafes next time.
The market building, yeah, that’s another great place to go, and I’ll talk about that. I dunno who built it, but I will talk about it next time.
At the Grand Hotel, I think you are after there. And you’ve got Josef Hoffman dining chairs. Joan, lucky you, invite me to dinner, please. And I’d love to, or perhaps they’re not for sitting on. Yes, I have eaten at Gundels a couple of times.
A building in the Andrassy houses Museum of Terror. That’s also, I’m very interested in people’s reactions to the Museum of Terror. I’m going to talk about that next time, and I will invite comment about it. I have very mixed feelings about that museum.
The great Jewish traveller Van Burri said that Hungary is, that Hungarian is more similar to Turkish, possibly. Yes, that’s true, the eu and uu sounds a bit, the Turkish and Hungarian is a bit similar, so maybe it does. But I think, of course, Hungarian goes back earlier than the Turkish occupation. Rumbach Synagogue restored recently. T
he Margaret Island is a very lovely place to go. Yes, I’ve got images. The city wasn’t as badly damaged in '56, but the area around the Parliament Building, you can see shell damage and bullet damage to the buildings around the Parliament Building from 1956. Very good small family. I’m going to talk about, I mean, as I said, I don’t know the Budapest restaurants as well as I know, let’s say, the Paris ones, or the Munich ones, or Vienna ones, for that matter. But I have a favourite restaurant, and I will tell it to you next time. And I had one of the best meals of my life in that restaurant, it’s unbelievably good.
How do you, I think, what can I say, Paula? I think for your own sake and for your sanity, you have to move on. You have to separate the beautiful, otherwise you’ll go crazy, we’ll all go crazy.
Joan, come with Trudy in April. Well, I’d love to go to Budapest with Trudy. That would be a huge fun thing to do.
I’m going to talk about the Holocaust next time. Of course, that very moving monument with the shoes, to me, that is, I would say, if I had to pick one Holocaust memorial that really says it, I think that the shoes monument by the Danube does that. But that’s my next talk, which will be talking a lot about the second World War.
Yes, that’s true, Chain Bridge at Marlow is by the same engineer as the one in Budapest. Yes, I’m sure it’s changed hugely since 1965. It’s even changed in the few years I’ve been going there.
100%, Clive and Bonnie, I so agree with you. It’s shameful and depressing, the dreadful government that they have in Hungary now.
Yes, that’s right, Wes Anderson’s movie, “Grand Hotel,” no, I think it’s that hotel. I have it on DVD, but I haven’t got around to.
And great paprika, well, I’m going to show you images of forests of paprika in that wonderful food tour somebody mentioned earlier. And I think on, I don’t have any thoughts about the spring festival, I don’t think I know enough about it. That’s it for today. Oh, I’m in the dark, sorry, the light’s gone. But I will see you again on Sunday. Thank you everybody. Bye-Bye.