Zádor Anna: Neoclassical Pest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1993)
The townscape evoked here is that of Pest in the first four decades of the nineteenth century. People wandering in the streets of present-day Pest crowded with pedestrians and vehicles would find it hard to believe that one and a half centuries ago this city was a quiet, intimate place. While these four decades represent one of the periods when the most rapid political, social, cultural and economic developments took place in both Pest and the whole country, somehow these sweeping changes were initiated in the homes of individuals. To understand this phenomenon we have to look further back into history. Present-day Budapest was created through the unification of three towns: Buda, on the right bank of the Danube, including the Castle Hill and its incline; Óbuda, built on the hilly, undulating territory north of Buda; and on the left bank of the Danube, Pest, the scene of incredibly rapid and diverse growth in the last third of the eighteenth century, the age of the Enlightenment, an era in which the reign of Joseph II was considered the dominant feature, and when the style of late baroque was already revealing signs of neoclassicism. It is at this time that Buda became the centre of administration and government; as a natural consequence, the appearance of numerous offices generated development in the service industry and trade. Buda’s population is mainly of German descent. Most of Óbuda, whose population is of rather mixed ancestry, was the family estate of the Zichy counts, and its inhabitants earned their livelihood from growing grapes and working in agriculture. The majority of inhabitants in Pest during this period were Hungarian, and from the middle of the eighteenth century the town was well on its way to becoming the industrial and commercial centre of the country; as a result, the expansion of the town became more and more urgent. CONSCIOUS TOWN PLANNING The first plans for the new district, Lipótváros (Leopold- town), named after the then King of Hungary, were prepared by the master builder, József Jung in 1787. In order to make this expansion possible, the first step 3
