Ságvári Ágnes (szerk.): Budapest. The History of a Capital (Budapest, 1975)

Pest-Buda from 1686 to 1849

District, Víziváros (Water Town) and in the Pest Inner City. The suburbs, with their onestorey houses, large courtyards, unpaved streets without sewage, kept their village character for a long time to come.

The dominant architectural style was Baroque, which in Pest survives mainly in churches and public buildings. The most beautiful example of the ecclesiastical architecture of this period in Pest is the Pauline (today the University) Church; the most outstanding among the public buildings is the great harmonious block of the Army Pensioners’ Hospital which today houses the Municipal Council. Perhaps the only surviving example of secular Baroque architecture of any importance in Pest is the Péterffy Palace, in which a restaurant has been functioning since 1831 (today called the Százéves [Hundred Years] Restaurant). In Buda the most important architectural work of the eighteenth century was the Royal Palace, rebuilt after its destruction during the 1686 siege, which took final shape in the reign of Maria Theresa in the second half of the century. The building which was once the Buda Town Hall, in Szentháromság (Trinity) Square, also deserves mention. Examples of the Baroque style can be seen in many of the private houses of old Buda.

The slow, somewhat medieval style of progress characterizing Hungarian towns in that century was in Buda and Pest quickened and changed by the development of trade, which raised those cities above the others and made them the commercial centre of the country. This large-scale development of trade was partly due to the extraordinarily favourable situation of the two cities in the centre of the country, on the main river-thoroughfare of the Danube. Pest was the first to profit from its advantageous position. By 1800 its four annual fairs had become the focal point for the centralization and exchange of all the national produce and the industrial goods imported from abroad. The already lively traffic in Pest was further increased by the establishment there of the central courts of justice in 1724, which brought those involved in lawsuits to Pest in large numbers.

By 1800 it had become increasingly obvious that the main government departments of Hungary should be situated near this busy centre. Buda was chosen. Its old position as the capital, its more sedate manner of life compared with its busy sister city, and at the same time, its overwhelmingly German population gave it the preference in the eyes of the Viennese Court, as more suitable for housing the central government departments. It possessed craftsmen and artisans capable of providing for the more exigent demands of the official class, as well as elegant and commodious houses to suit their manner of life. As a result, the principal administrative and finance departments, the Council of the Governor- General and the Hungarian Royal Treasury were transferred from Pozsony to Buda in 1784, and with this development Buda once more became a capital in the administrative sense of the word, confirmed still further by the fact that meetings of the Diet were also held there in the 1790’s, and that from the end of the century on the Palatine, the governor representing the king, also lived in Buda with his entourage.

The secondary schools of the Jesuits in Buda and the Piarists in Pest, as well as the ecclesiastical seminaries established in both cities in the eighteenth century and the shortlived Law College of Pest, first-rate by international standards, attracted pupils and students from far and near, the sons of the nobility as well as the children of the bourgeoisie. But the real creation of a cultural influence profoundly affecting the whole country came when the university at Nagyszombat was transferred first to Buda in 1777 and then to Pest in 1783. The transfer of the university to Pest was of tremendous importance, because the

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