Budapest Diaries - Buda Castle District

I got up bright and early (although not by Copenhagen standards) and headed off to Castle Hill, which is a smaller hill just north of Géllert Hill along the Danube. Buda Castle as you might expect occupies most of Castle Hill. The day turned out to be a real scorcher, somewhere in the low nineties requiring a large number of pit stops to buy water. I think I must have had at least three gallons in addition to a couple of Coke Lights. Buda Castle involves a large number of small streets and pathways which are not always clearly marked and it can get a little confusing, but it is relatively small and the sheer number of landmarks makes navigation fairly easy.

The day started off by crossing over the Elizabeth Bridge* and headed north until I hit Adam Clark Square, and headed up a path that took me to Matthias Church and the Fishermen's Bastion. Several corronations and royal weddings have taken place in Matthias Church, although after the Turks conquered Budapest in 1541 the church was converted into a mosque. Legend has it that during the Holy League's siege of Buda in 1686 a piece of wall came down revealing a statue of the Virgin Mary to a group of praying Muslims, causing the morale of the garrison to collapse. Unfortunately Matthias Church is largely under construction so it wasn't possible to get a great shot of the whole church. Fishermen's Bastion is pretty awesome as well. It has the look of a fairy tale whitewashed castle wall complete with towers and staircases, although methinks Buda might have had a better time of it if the castle was not defended by the guild of fishermen. The Bastion itself was not actually built until around 1900, but the fishermen had been defending this stretch of the wall since medieval times. Besides just being cool in general, Fishermen's Bastion has some great views of the city and a kick-ass statue of Saint Stephen (more on him later). I took a tour around the very impressive interior of Matthias Church, and learned a little bit more about its history. FYI for future visitors most churches in Budapest will not let you visit if you are wearing a tank top or sports bra, so make sure you bring a sleeved shirt with you. Fortunately I telegraphed this one so I just pulled a quick Superman before going in.

NOTE: you may have noticed that Budapest has a lot of saint-related stuff going on. As you will notice if you ever visit it is a rather Catholic city, with Catholics outnumbering Protestants by about three-to-one. Political correctness towards Protestants and Muslims is sometimes absent from historical descriptions around here, with Transylvanians and Turks being common foils in Hungarian history.

After I took my leave of Matthias Church I headed south along the castle grounds, passing a number of important buildings, statues, and gates, including the Sándor Palace, a large statue of the mythical turul - a sacred bird of the ancient Magyars, resembling a large falcon - that sits at the head of the Hapsburg Steps, and the Corvinus Gate which leads into the Buda Castle a.k.a. the Royal Palace. Going through the gate leads to the courtyard in front of the east side of Buda Castle, where a large statue of a mounted hortobágy csikós (basically a Hungarian cowboy) stands triumphantly.

I decided I would take a break from the sun, and headed inside the Hungarian National Gallery which occupies this wing of Buda Castle. It turned out to be a great choice, since the museum was full of some great stuff including a restored altar of Saint John the Baptist from Kisszebes. Most of the art centered on war and religion, two of the favorite pastimes of Hungarians apparently. There was also some neat modern art to see, as well as some surprisingly interesting art from Hungarian children. In addition there were a number of older stone carvings to see. Note number one billion to future visitors to Hungary if you want to use your camera in any museum in Budapest you will probably have to buy a photo ticket but don't worry they don't seem to be very expensive in general.

During my tour of the Hungarian National Gallery, I was introduced to Hungary's most potent natural resource: little old ladies. I swear every museum I visited had an army of small grandmas who shuffled after you to make sure you weren't doing God only knows what. They are apparently even hired by small grocery stores to make sure people put their croisants in a little plastic baggy lest perchance they get some crumbs on the floor. In general they didn't speak any significant amount of English although many of them were very effective at standing around and looking cantankerous. Some of them were very friendly though, particularly the ones at the Imre Varga Exhibition House.

After I was done with the National Gallery (which, even though I only saw about half of it, took a while since it's huge) I strolled around the Palace grounds for a while. I got to survey a number of more statues, fountains, gates, and tours, as well as take a stroll into what appeared to be a highly restricted area. Pictured here is the Matthias Fountain, which shows the young King Matthias Corvinus and Szép Ilona (beautiful Helen) who according to a poem fell in love when she saw him hunting and then died of a broken heart because she felt unworthy of him after learning of his true identity.XThen I headed back north to explore the rest of the Castle District but that as they say is another story (or post... whatever).

*Speaking of bridges I never saw the bridge that was supposed to be named after Stephen Colbert. The M0, or Megyeri bridge, is several miles south and not on the way to the airport.