Szablyár Péter: Step by step - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)
Margert Island with its extra stairs
In 2003 the Hungarian Society for Urban Planning and its sister associations proposed that the Budapest embankments from Komjádi Béla utca to Petőfi Bridge on the Buda and from Dráva utca to the South Railway Bridge on the Pest side receive protected status. Increased protection would indeed be justified, judging from the recent battles waged for the preservation of the valuable elements of the cityscape when the main sewer on the lower embankment in Buda was under reconstruction. The embankments of Budapest have become memorial sites commemorating the Arrow Cross terror that was raging in 1944. In November of 2009, the Budapest Assembly passed a resolution to preserve the memory of the victims and those working to save human lives by appropriately naming the lower embankments. Recommendations were thus made to name, on the Buda side, the section between Árpád Bridge and Margaret Bridge for Margit Slachta; the one from Margaret Bridge to Batthyány tér for Papal Nuncio Angelo Rótta; the one from here to the Chain Bridge for the protector of children, Lutheran priest Gábor Sztehlo; and, finally, the stretch from Chain Bridge to Elizabeth Bridge for Friedrich Born, the Swiss diplomat representing the international Red Cross. On the Pest side, a section each will be named for Carl Lutz, who provided for houses under Swiss diplomatic protection in the neighbourhood, between Dráva utca and Margaret Island; for former Prime Minister József Antall Sr. from Margaret Bridge to the Chain Bridge; for Jane Haining, the martyred missionary of the Scottish Church working in Budapest, from the Chain Bridge to Elizabeth Bridge; and for Blessed Sára Salkaházi, a martyr of charity beatified in 2006, from Szabadság Bridge to Közraktár utca. Thus the lower embankments of the Danube at Budapest will become pathways of remembrance, reverence and gratitude. City planners broaching ideas to establish a closer link between city dwellers and the Danube, and traffic managers intent on turning the lower embankments into dual carriageways keep waging pitched battles whenever long-term plans of development are tabled. The thoroughfares on both the Pest and the Buda side embankments carry a huge amount of motor traffic. This is best illustrated by the chaos that sets in year after year when high water levels make the lower embankment impassable for a few days. Margaret Island with its extra stairs it is around its northern entrance that the most romantic region of Margaret Island can be found. One of the best-liked attractions of the expanse is the Musical Fountain, whose peculiar history is something that the visitor who is as patient as 39
