Boros Géza: Statue Park - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)

The star-shaped flower-bed

■ View of the park with the star-ihaped flower-bed

own gentle way. During the decades of communist rule factories, major public buildings and landmarks such as the look-out tower on János Hill were all decorated with a red star, the symbol of the reigning system. The most famous of all the country’s radiant stars was the one placed at the top of the dome of the Parliament building. Made to a Soviet model, this ruby-glass star was first lit on 20 August 1950, to be extinguished forever on 23 October 1989.

The star-shaped flower-bed is a horticultural reconstruction of the giant star that used to decorate the middle of the roundabout by the Buda end of the Chain Bridge, near the Zero Kilometre Stone at Hungary’s symbolic centre. This one is a very modest version of the original, which was once made by the employees of the Budapest parks and gardens authority from the finest ornamental rose and cypress shrubs. This star of flowers also fell victim to the iconoclastic zeal which characterised the change of political system. The star-smashing tradition of 1956 was revived by an anonymous perpetrator who deliberately drove a car across the star on an April night in 1989. The removal of this particular symbol was an item on the agenda of the Hungarian October Party, which toppled the

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