Zeidler Miklós: Sporting Spaces - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2000)
The effect was enhanced by the inclusion among the sports sculptures of such compositions as the Young Singers, the Participants in a Procession, the Grenade Throwers, the Apprentices, the Marchers of Agricultural Workers and the Folk Dancers. A project related to the construction of the People’s Stadium would have been the opening of a new branch of the underground railway to connect Sztálin tér (today’s Deák tér and Erzsébet tér) and the stadium, but that undertaking had been a year behind schedule as early as the summer of 1952. The first time the terraces of the People’s Stadium were filled was on 20 August 1953. 80,000 tickets were issued for the opening ceremony, whose style was perfectly in line with the tastes of the socialist bloc. The hoisting of the flag, the playing of the peace march, the mass exercises, the children’s gym routines and the folk-dance show were followed by a closing formation featuring the human inscription: “Long live the party!” In the afternoon an athletics competition and, finally, a football game were featured. In the latter Honvéd beat Spartak Moscow 3-2. It is only to be expected that, in the best traditions of the country, the fact that the People’s Stadium was ceremonially inaugurated did not mean that the construction was in fact completed. The lighting system was not mounted before 1959 (to be renewed in 1971), a large section-about 22,000 seats in 24 sectors-of the terraces was missing and so were eight stories of the dressing-room building. These were never to be built. Seating capacity could later be added to by raising the density of seating and setting up auxiliary terraces-this was done when the national eleven played against the Austrian side on 16 October 1955 before 104,000 spectators. However, with conditions improved, seating capacity has by now been reduced to 65,000. The greatest period of the People’s Stadium was between the fifties and the sixties. At that time spectators were virtually overindulged by the country’s football players. The game in which Hungary beat England 7-1 on 7 May 1954, or the hundredth time the celebrated player Bozsik was sent on with the national eleven in April of 1962 were just as unforgettable events as 58
