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Budapest’s bridges: Chain Bridge
Superstition has it that if you make a wish when your ship goes under a bridge, it will come true. This is good news for people who want a lot as altogether there are 9 bridges, including the railway bridges, over the Budapest section of the Danube.
Of course, they were not always here. Before the first was built, there was a ferry and in winter it was possible to walk or even go by cart across the frozen Danube. The only trouble was when the ice started to flow. Then it could be traversed by neither ferry nor cart and the link between the two banks was broken. At such a time, after waiting for a week, Count István Széchenyi made his famous announcement that he would give a year’s income to build a permanent bridge.
According to the original plans, the first Budapest bridge was to be a sister of the Charles Bridge in Prague using similar solutions, but eventually Adam Clark’s design won the day. On 20 November 1849 the new bridge opened.
Two neoclassical pillars support the chains on which the deck of the bridge is suspended, hence the name chain bridge. The bridge is guarded at both ends by sculptor János Marschalkó’s lions baring their teeth.
It is a well-known local legend that the lions have no tongue. The story goes that an apprentice shoemaker discovered the lions’ “disability”. The news that the lions had no tongue spread quickly. The whole of Budapest was talking about it and János Marschalkó became the butt of ridicule and scoffing. For a while he ignored it, until one evening, when taunted again, he sharply retorted, “I’ll wager five hundred forints that when a lion holds his mouth open in the way my lions do, you can’t see the tongue as it is drawn back low.” The bet was accepted, and Marschalkó and his pals went off to a menagerie on István Square and there he was proved right.
Can the tongue be seen or not? Some people say that it can when viewed from above, while others allege there is also something in the mouth of the one with a slightly broken tooth on the Buda side. Have a look!
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St Stephen’s Basilica
Raising funds to build a church that would be for Budapest what Notre Dame is for Paris first began in the 1810s. The works, however, only started in 1851 following the neoclassical design of the leading architect of the day, József Hild. By building the core of the church on a Greek cross ground plan, he envisaged a later extension. The encroachment of surrounding buildings eventually precluded this, and in any event erecting the core itself was fraught with difficulties.
Hild died in 1867 and Miklós Ybl, who also designed the Opera House, took over. Just a few months later, on 22 January 1868, as Ybl foresaw, the dome crashed to the ground due to structural faults and poor quality materials. While the debris was cleared, Ybl drew up new plans, reworking not only the structure but also the appearance. Because of its proximity to the Danube, a three-storey basement had to be constructed to provide stability, so there’s about as much building below ground as there is above. The construction continued based on Ybl’s neo-Renaissance design after the architect’s death in 1895. The Basilica, named after the founder of the state St Stephen, was consecrated in 1905.
Today the imposing dome is a favourite with tourists as you can go up and take in the 360° panorama of the city. This is about as close to heaven as you can get in Budapest as the Basilica is the capital’s tallest building – though the temporal House of Parliament rises to exactly the same celestial height, 96 m. One thing, however, that the Church has but the State hasn’t is Hungary’s largest bell. This 9-ton heavyweight hangs in one of the Basilica’s towers. Sadly, its predecessor fell victim to a policy of plowshares into swords in World War II. Inside the Basilica there’s an episcopal treasury with enchanting pieces (e.g. the porcelain replica of the Holy Crown and 16th-17th-century liturgical objects) and, apart from the deservedly celebrated Benczúr mosaics, there’s the preserved right hand of the eponymous St Stephen, better known as the Holy Dexter. It has been a venerated relic since the monarch’s death and is ceremonially paraded once a year on 20 August, the national holiday.
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Budapest’s bridges: Margaret Bridge
The Chain Bridge’s 26-year sole reign over the Danube was broken by Margaret Bridge in 1876. As the winner of the competition, a huge task confronted French engineer Ernest Gougin – he had to make a structure that, apart from connecting the two banks, also approached Margaret Island and remained at right angles to the current of the two branches of the river. The solution was to bend the bridge at the island.
Thanks to this design feature, the new bridge quickly attracted its own particular, melancholic public. Those wishing to throw themselves into the deep forever transferred allegiances to Margaret Bridge as the constable responsible for watching the bridge was unable to see people walking between the two ends due to the bend in the middle. The celebrated 19th-century Hungarian poet János Arany immortalised the jumpers in his ballad “The Dedication of the Bridge” written in 1877.
The spur enabling the public to access Margaret Island from the bridge proper was only built later in 1899-1900. (The island was bought by the city in 1908 and until 1945 could only be visited by paying a fee.)
Heavy traffic meant that the bridge had to undergo a major reconstruction between 1935 and 1937 when its cobbled road surface was replaced and it acquired a tram stop in the middle. All the bridges over the Danube were blown up by retreating Nazi troops in January 1945, but Margaret Bridge had been damaged before then. In the rush hour on the afternoon of 4 November 1944 an accidental explosion blew apart one span on the Pest side and caused another to collapse. 600 civilians, including an Olympic fencing champion, and 40 German soldiers lost their lives.
The pontoon bridge positioned alongside the battered bridge was affectionately known by the name “Mantsi”, short for Margaret. When the renovated bridge reopened in 1948, it had a widened deck, which has coped with traffic ever since. The bridge, however, is showing signs of wear and tear once more, and plans are now afoot for major renovation works in the near future. It is muted that even the original ornamental statues, brought all the way from France at the time and long since vanished, may be put back.
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Budapest’s bridges: Liberty Bridge
Szabadság or Liberty Bridge is Budapest’s shortest bridge. It was the fourth crossing to span the river, constructed from funds gathered from the tolls on the first two bridges over the Danube, the Chain Bridge and Margaret Bridge. (The third bridge was a railway link.)
Work on it began in 1894 and it was inaugurated as part of the 1896 celebrations of the millennium of the conquest of Hungary. Originally called the Franz Joseph Bridge after the Emperor and King, the sovereign banged in the last rivet himself with great technical aplomb. The monarch, however, did not soil his hands with a tool, preferring to press a button in the ceremonial pavilion erected on the Pest side, thereby setting in motion a 45-ton hammer at the Buda abutment, which drove the last, silver rivet home.
The bridge is adorned by the statues of four turuls, birds of prey prominent in ancient Magyar mythology, which have kept an eagle eye on the passing traffic from their perch on top of the masts ever since. The first major development was the building of the tramway in 1898, while buses only began running over the bridge in 1928. The bridge suffered the same fate as the other Danube bridges on 16 January 1945, when its central span was blown up by retreating Nazi troops. Almost a year later the pontoon bridge tied to its pillars and serving as a temporary link between the two halves of the city was swept away by the heavy ice floe. Reconstruction of the bridge itself started in the spring of 1946 and on 20 August the same year the bridge was opened to the public under its new name, Liberty.
By the start of the 21st century some 17,000 vehicles were crossing the bridge each day and in August 2007 it was shut for a major overhaul. At present the only way over is to walk, and moves are afoot to retain its pedestrian status once the fourth metro line is complete and running beneath it. One imagines the turuls, who prefer flying anyway, will be glad of the peace.The source of the above text is a very promising web site, currently under construction, which already has a lot of useful tips and witty informative descriptions of Budapest.
www.budapestpostcards.hu/new
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