Urbs - Magyar várostörténeti évkönyv 7. (Budapest, 2012)
Recenziók
582 Abstracts court’s presence in the improvement of cities, received special attention and has been the subject of a number of dissertations and monographs. Research on connections between secondary royal residences or the queen’s residences and neighbouring settlements as well as analysis of the episcopal sees and market towns, have raised exciting new questions and stimulated further research. This study reviews those new results in the context of urban history, outlines similarities and differences in European (especially Central European) forms of development and indicates some issues and research in progress in which the Hungarian results stand out, even at a European level. KÁROLY MAGYAR Royal Centers - Royal Palaces The first part of the present study focuses on medieval Hungarian royal centers in chronological order, that is to say, it examines first the cities of Esztergom, Székesfehérvár and Óbuda (from the 9th to the 13th century), and after that the cities of Buda and Visegrád (from the 13th to the 16th century). The study compares the royal residences and their relations to those cities and towns that were connected to them. The second part of the study, by looking at the examples of London and Paris, concentrates on how all of these relations developed in case of Buda and Visegrád, which were significant capitals in those times. All three former Hungarian royal centers were located in that central region of the Hungarian Kingdom, which was already called medium regni, that is to say “the center of the country” as well as locus communior, that is to say “common places” by contemporaries. This region was not only important because of its central location but also because the Arpad dynasty had private estates, especially forests there. All of these entailed the relatively denseness of other royal courts around the royal centers. Although some parts of the royal estates were donated by the end of the late Middle Ages, the region preserved its prominent role. Therefore, the emergence of the new royal centers in this region is totally understandable after the 1241-1242 Mongol invasions. See: the (new) Buda, in the second half of the 13th century, and at the turn of the 13th and 14lh centuries, Visegrád, between 1323 and 1410, and Buda again, till 1541. The development, physical form and relation of the early three and later two Hungarian royal centers are different in many ways. The reason of this, apart from the features of the natural environment, is that these royal centers developed in different historical periods and they had different roles. By all means four out of five royal centers were located directly on the bank of the Danube.
