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

The reinforced concrete bridge of the highway ring ENCIRCLING BUDAPEST

Very much unlike the two other bridges to be considered here. The construction of one of these was decided on by Parliament in the late 1990s. Just how much this decision had been delayed will be clear if we consider that, beginning in the autumn of 1992, the construction of this latest road bridge followed that of the previous one after thirty years. Its location had by all intents and purposes been determined back in the nineteenth century by urban development marked by the addition of ring to ring each larger than the previous one.

The Hungária ring was created by city planners in the 1870s. Its northern end was connected to the right bank through the Árpád Bridge but on the southern end such a connection was still lacking. This prevented the Lágymányos district of Buda from catching up with the development of the city at large.

Following a controversial and eventually futile competition that the municipal authorities expected to produce a suitable name, the new structure was baptised Lágymányos Bridge after the district it reached. No doubt an act unprecedented in the history of Budapest’s bridges. It was built alongside an ages old railway bridge serving as the road counterpart of the latter. It was precisely this unhappy

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