Szablyár Péter: Step by step - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)

From amphitheatres to the stadium of the people

it is by way of a few steps that one can descend from the huge, glass-walled platform area to the level of the busy Grand Boulevard. These carry large pedestrian traffic all day long, which is why it caused a panic when, on 4 October 1962, ten carriages broke off their shunting train and one of these broke through the glass wall after sweeping aside the buffer only to be halted on the road below the stairs. Luckily only one person was injured in the accident.

From amphitheatres to the stadium of the people

Standing out of Budapest's Roman monuments dating from classical antiquity are two amphitheatres, which used to serve as the venues of large-scale public events organised for the populace of the civic and military towns of ancient Aquincum.

Before the freeway to Szentendre passes underneath the railway line to the town of Dorog through the rather narrow archways reminiscent of structures in a Roman aqueduct, the motorist will notice a strange, ring-shaped edifice behind some fencing. This is what they call the civic-town amphitheatre. Built in the 2nd century on a ground plan of an almost perfect circle, the dirt-walled amphitheatre admitted an audience of six thousand with its elliptic circumferences measuring 86.5 and a 75.5 metres in diameter. With commoners seated on wooden benches set up on the

■ In the wake of giadiaton — the civic-town amphitheatre

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