Ságvári Ágnes (szerk.): Budapest. The History of a Capital (Budapest, 1975)
The Medieval Sister Cities
The Medieval Sister Cities (Selection of documents on the period: I—IV) Budapest is situated almost in the centre of the Carpathian Basin, on both banks of the Danube. Hills, covered by woods from prehistoric times, rise from the right bank of the river, while the flat land of the left bank forms part of the Great Hungarian Plain. These geographical conditions favoured the building of a city on this site. Border countries between mountainous regions and plains are natural market places, and a primitive centre for the exchange of goods was established here relatively early on. Roads generally follow the lines of rivers, and the river itself is a basis for river traffic. On the one hand the Danube separates what are two regions of very different character, but on the other, it brings them together again where shallow water makes it easy to ford the river. Along the upper and lower reaches of the Danube, above and below the Budapest of today, there were in the past few suitable crossing places, whereas on the section of the river which actually flows through the city itself, there was a ford which was easily accessible from the valleys of the Buda Mountains, and even a ferry. It was this which in fact decided the establishment of a settlement there. The limes, the Roman frontier, ran along the Danube, and this was one of the reasons for the establishment of a Roman camp in the area of Óbuda, the third component or district of contemporary Budapest. This settlement, Aquincum, became the capital of the Roman province of Lower Pannónia. The geographical situation also certainly played a decisive role in this settlement becoming the capital of the medieval Hungarian Kingdom. Buda, Pest, Óbuda The medieval history of modern Budapest consists of the separate histories of three independent towns: Buda, Pest and Óbuda. The three cities in proximity to one another and the villages surrounding them, developed in close conjunction, and cannot be understood divorced from one another. By the end of the Middle Ages Buda and Pest were considered as an economic unit, and this also is a justification for discussing their history together. Research into the history of the medieval capital of Hungary has been hampered by the lack of documentation. The medieval archives of the three cities were destroyed, and so were the archives of the royal house who also acted as landlords of the area in this case. Nor is the existing source material always reliable. Archaeology has provided aid, especially in the clarification of topographical questions. The oldest settlement, Óbuda, at that time known 11
