Buza Péter: Bridges of the Danube - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1999)

The bridge named after Prince Árpád •

Bridge, the one that closed the outer ring. An act was passed in parliament as early as 1908 but the project was not begun until before World War II. The then thirty-year old plan was first conceived in response to a momentous episode in the city’s history, namely the great epidemic of vine-pest that broke out around the turn of the century. The vineyards from which many of the citizens of Óbuda made a living were completely destroyed and the men sought and found alternative employment in the newly built factories of Angyalföld. The commuters had to make a long detour, which is why the first memorandum pleading the case of the Óbuda Bridge, as it was first called, was dated from 1903.

Tenders were invited in 1929. The first prize was shared between the Győző Mihailich-Iván Kotsis and the János Kossalka-Gyula Wälder teams. János Kossalka was commissioned to draw up the detailed plans. When it was built, the new bridge was the longest in Central Europe. The Danube is divided into four branches at that point. The greatest difficulty was to cope with this problem and maintain a single entity while merging the oblique sections of the structure which were determined by the different directions of the flow at the various branches.

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