Buda

• 1. Introduction

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  In 1432, a writer named Bertrandon de la Broquière described Buda in blunt terms. He said it "is governed by Germans, as well in respect to police as commerce, and what regards the different professions". Buda is the part of Budapest that lies on the western bank of the Danube. It is the capital of Hungary today, yet that remark describes a city run by outsiders. How did a hilltop royal city come to be governed that way? Why do medieval chronicles tie its name to the brother of Attila the Hun? And who were the people who lived, ruled and died there across the centuries?

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• 2. Attila's Brother

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  A medieval chronicle tells a grim story about the name of Buda. It says Attila, the Hunnic ruler, went to the city of Sicambria in Pannonia and killed his own brother, Bleda, who was also called Buda. Attila then threw the corpse into the Danube. The chronicle explains the quarrel this way. While Attila was away in the west, his brother had named the city Buda's Castle after himself.

  Attila forbade the Huns and the other peoples to use that name and called the place Attila's Capital instead. The Germans, terrified by the ban, called it Eccylburg, which means Attila Castle. The Hungarians simply ignored the order. They called it Óbuda, meaning Old Buda, and the chronicle says they still do.

  A second chronicle offers a different origin. It begins with Magog, son of Japhet, whom it names as the first king of Scythia. His people, it says, were called Magyars after him, and Attila descended from his royal line. In the 451st year of Our Lord's birth, according to this account, Attila came down from Scythia into Pannonia with a mighty force and put the Romans to flight. He made a royal residence beside the Danube, above the hot springs, and ordered the old buildings he found there restored. He enclosed them in a strong circular wall. Hungarians call it Budavár, and the Germans call it Etzelburg, which again means Attila Castle.

  The walls that history can actually document rose many centuries later, on a hill above the river.

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• 3. The Royal Hill

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  Between 1247 and 1249, King Béla IV of Hungary raised a walled royal city on Castle Hill, which Hungarians call Várhegy. The fortress and palace he built became the nucleus around which the town of Buda grew. The town soon gained great importance. For a long time the word Buda meant only this walled city on the hill, and nothing more.

  In 1361, Buda became the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary. It kept that role until 1873. In that same year, Buda was joined administratively with Pest and Óbuda, and together they formed modern Budapest.

  Before that long run as capital ended, however, the hill spent more than a century under a very different ruler.

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• 4. Budin

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  From 1541 to 1686, Buda belonged to Ottoman-ruled central Hungary. The Ottomans made it the capital of a province they called Budin. The city's population changed with its rulers. By the middle of the seventeenth century, Buda had become majority Muslim. This was largely the result of an influx of Muslims from the Balkans.

  That Ottoman chapter closed with a second attempt to take the city by force.

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• 5. The Siege of 1686

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  In 1686, a renewed European campaign set out to win back Buda, the former capital of medieval Hungary. Two years earlier, an attempt to take the city had failed. This time the Holy League's army was twice as large, with over 74,000 men.

  The soldiers came from across Europe. Contemporary accounts list German, Dutch, Hungarian, English, Spanish, Czech, French, Croat, Burgundian, Danish and Swedish troops. Other Europeans joined as volunteers, artillerymen and officers. The Christian forces reconquered Buda.

  Once the fighting ended, the question became who would come to live in the city they had won.

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• 6. A City of Many Tongues

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  In 1495, the Hungarian Royal Treasury recorded that Buda had a Hungarian majority with a sizeable German minority. That count sits oddly beside the picture from the century before. Pest was mostly Hungarian in the fifteenth century, while Buda was said to have a German majority. The 1432 writer also noted a significant Jewish population in the city. He said these residents were proficient in French, and that many descended from Jews who had earlier been expelled from France.

  After the reconquest, Buda was almost deserted. Townspeople from different parts of southern Germany moved in. They clung to their language. They partly crowded out and partly absorbed the Hungarians and Serbians who were already there.

  Then the rural population began moving into the city. In the nineteenth century, Hungarians slowly became the majority in Buda.

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• 7. Famous Residents

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  Jadwiga of Poland was born in Buda around 1373 and lived until 1399. She became the first female monarch of the Kingdom of Poland. Andrew III of Hungary, who lived from about 1265 to 1301, reigned over Hungary and Croatia from 1290 to 1301. He was buried in the Greyfriars' Church, a Franciscan church in Buda.

  John Corvinus, who lived from 1473 to 1504, was the illegitimate son of King Matthias Corvinus and his mistress, Barbara Edelpöck. Louis II of Hungary, who lived from 1506 to 1526, held the crowns of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia from 1516 to 1526.

  The city also produced writers and scholars. Aaron ben Joseph of Buda was a poet known around 1686. Mihail G. Boiagi, an Aromanian grammarian and professor, lived from 1780 to about 1842. László Szalay, a statesman and historian, and József Eötvös, a writer and statesman, were both born in 1813. Szalay died in 1864 and Eötvös in 1871.

  Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, a physician and scientist, lived from 1818 to 1865. He was an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures and proposed that doctors begin disinfecting their hands. Edmund Hauler, a classicist and philologist, lived from 1859 to 1941.

  The composer Kornelije Stanković, a Serbian, was born and died in Buda. His life ran from 1831 to 1865, the same year Semmelweis died.

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• 8. Hills and Landmarks

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  Six of Budapest's districts, numbered I, II, III, XI, XII and XXII, are what most people mean when they say Buda. The royal city on the hill is now called the Várnegyed. Everyday speech uses the name for the whole western side, a habit the source calls pars pro toto, where a part stands for the whole. This broader Buda includes medieval Óbuda. It amounts to a third of the city's total area, and much of it is forested.

  The landmarks of this wider Buda include the Royal Palace, Matthias Church and the Citadella. Visitors also go to the Gellért Baths, the Buda Hills and the Carmelite Monastery of Buda. Sándor Palace stands here as well, and it is the residence of the President of Hungary.

  Buda has one listed twin city, Capestrano in Italy.

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