Hajós György: Heroes' Square - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2001)

authorities on 20 June 1945. Heroes’ Square was the venue of a rally held by the Left League on 7 March 1946; on 19 August 1947 the Social Democratic Party occupied the square for its first national party convention, an event followed, on 6 September, by a demonstration organised by the Communist Party. On 1 May 1957, a rally meant to demonstrate the consolidation of the political situation, on 27 June 1988 a demonstration against the state-sponsored destruction of Transylvanian villages, and in 1990 a series of events accompanying the fundamental changes in the country’s political system were all held in Heroes’ Square.

The events of a major ecclesiastic festival were organised in the square when, between 25 and 29 May 1938, the 34th Eucharistic World Congress was held in Budapest to mark the anniversary of the death of King Stephen I, Hungary’s first, later canonised, monarch. (The series of festive events organised by the Catholic Church to honour the Eucharist was attended, among 14 cardinals, 48 archbishops and 197 bishops, by Cardinal Pacelli, who represented, in the position of the Vatican’s State Secretary, the Pope, whom he himself was to succeed as Pius XII.) A year later, in May 1939, the 28th National Assembly of the Catholic Church

The colonnade decorated with flags featuring THE LEGENDARY HOLE IN THE MIDDLE, 16 JUNE 1989

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