To mark the visit of the Spanish royal family in 1908, one of the most respected architects of the time, Géza Maróti, designed a monumental, yet temporary triumphal arch—the grand procession passed through this arch, then after crossing the Chain Bridge, it arrived to its final destination at the Buda Castle.

‘The reconstruction of the palace under the Rákosi and Kádár eras ruined a nearly thousand-year-old tradition, inflicting a wound on the inner strength that unites our community, on our self-confidence and on our physical heritage.’

Just as some Christians had trouble accounting for their role in the 1918 Aster Revolution and the 1919 Communist coup d’état, some Jews also had difficulty facing their former position in terms of these events.

Zadar was a Western Christian town with a rich history, and at that time it was once again under the authority of Emeric (Imre in Hungarian), King of Hungary (1196–1204), who himself had taken the crusader’s vow.

Muslims do have an incredible veneration for the Mother of Jesus, as expressed in Persian art. However, there are two ‘Marys’: the Blessed Mother of Christ, and Maryam (Miryam), the prophetess of the Old Testament.

The world-famous Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, and creator of the Kodály method was born 140 years ago on this day.

In a referendum on 14 December 1921, the town of Sopron voted to remain part of Hungary, for which it has been celebrated as the town of loyalty and freedom ever since.

The majority of the refugees were intellectuals, mostly from Transylvania, followed by those from what is Slovakia, Serbia and Austria today, but there were also some who fled to Hungary from Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Nativity plays and nativity scenes are an integral part of Hungarian Christmas traditions.

Hungarian Christmas markets regularly make it to the top of European rankings as the country prepares for the festive season.

It is a unique Hungarian Christmas tradition to decorate the Christmas tree with szaloncukor or ‘parlour candies’. This delicious Christmas treat is inseparable from the festive season in Hungary.

The defence mechanism of the Christian world was triggered incredibly quickly in 1241, but due to various conflicts of interest, mostly international, it slowed down just as quickly and then became totally paralyzed.

In the second part of our series, we will examine another pillar of the Coptic Church that arguably played an even greater role in the history of Christianity as a whole.

Studies have found that the belief in a supranatural being that watches our decisions encourage prosocial behaviour and therefore, contributes to large-scale societal cooperation.

Aversion to work was not unique to the leaders of the emigration. After a while, Mihály Révész, a social-democratic journalist in exile, had enough of living abroad and tried to get a job in Budapest. But when his left-wing friends found him a job as a manual worker, he turned it down, indignantly declaring ‘I won’t be a street sweeper’.

Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka is now recognized as one of the greatest Hungarian painters who ever lived. The artist’s work, however, was discovered only a decade after he died in poverty.

The gap between reality and the striving for a pure Christian social life angered many conservative public figures in the Horthy era. In his diary, Prohászka wrote that for Hungarian men, ‘using a prostitute is like drinking a cup of coffee’.

On 23–27 November, the Vienna Book Fair featured thousands of fresh publications and hundreds of high-profile events with more than 500 authors and experts from around the world.

In this article we describe ten wonderful places in Budapest where you can relax a little in the last month of 2022.

There was a time not too far off in the recent past when very few people in the Western world would have recognized words like ‘Copt’ or ‘Coptic Christian.’ By now the popular awareness of Copts in the Western consciousness has become more consolidated, and their identity more widely recognized.

Although the official Hungarian propaganda constantly portrayed the ‘dark figures’ of the leftist emigration as plotting from abroad against Hungary, the surviving primary sources show a picture of ineffectual losers fighting among themselves.

Altogether at least 700,000 Hungarians were taken to the Soviet Union by force to work in the infamous labour camps of the country. One third of these men and women never returned—and those who did, never received any compensation from Hungary’s Communist government.

While generational differences pushed one group of young men into the camp of the contemporary nationalist right, that did not necessarily determine their later life choices. Generational experiences did define men to some extent—but it was political and moral choices that had the final say.

According to an anti-Zionist pamphlet published during the Republic of Councils, Zionism ‘is nothing but a Jewish version of clerical reaction’ and was to be ‘fully eradicated.’

On 14 March 1876, the flood hit the Buda side of the Danube, then two days later, the river flooded Újpest, the Tabán and Lágymányos as well, and completely submerged Margaret Island. The streets of Buda looked like Venice—boats were the only feasible means of transportation.

Is heroism, self-sacrifice and risking one’s life for a noble cause indeed just a dream that flesh-and-blood people would not be capable of? Luckily, no.

Budapest was unified on 17 November 1873, and in the decades that followed the capital went through remarkable development, becoming the beautiful city that we know today.

When Arrow Cross dictator Ferenc Szálasi took over on 15 October 1944, the new authorities required all civil servants to pledge allegiance to them. It was then that Mindszenty prepared a document entitled ‘Juramentum non’ (‘no oath’ in Latin.) The motto of the document was: ‘One cannot serve the [Arrow Cross] revolution and the Church at the same time.’

In this article we will walk you through the history of the names of Budapest’s bridges and the historical events that influenced their evolution.

The building hosted performances for 56 years, but after experiencing two world wars and a revolution, its demolition was announced in 1964, citing the beginning of the construction of Budapest’s first metro line as a reason.