Hajós György: Heroes' Square - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2001)

thoroughfares of the park, Állatkerti körút, Olaf Palme sétány and Kós Károly sétány join the circular road that surrounds the square.

Once a marshy area covered with copses and shrubs, what is today’s City Park saw many a historical event. It was here that, during the Mongol invasion of the country, Batu Khan’s army, pretending retreat only to turn suddenly around, ambushed the Hungarian soldiers. The area, known as Ordögdűlő or the Devil’s Fields at the time, was donated to the Dominican nuns by Béla IV in 1241. According to the chronicler Bonfini, the area was a well-liked hunting ground of King Matthias. It was also here that the leader of the peasant army György Dózsa set up his commander’s camp.

At the end of the 18th century, the groves, already in municipal ownership, began to attract the attention of the city of Pest. City magistrate János Boráros raised the idea that it should be turned into “a place of delectation” serving recreational purposes. As the city had no wish to finance the project, in 1799 the area was leased to Prince Primate József Batthyány for twenty- four years. It was assumed that once turned into park- lands by the Primate, a well-kept area would revert to the city at the expiry of the lease. Employing civil engineer Rudolf Witsch and 2000 labourers, the Primate did in fact begin the drainage of the marshlands creating a lake with two islets in it. However, the premature death of the Primate prevented the completion of the works. His heir, Count Tivadar Batthyány neglected the groves (he devoted his time to technical inventions instead) and even the completed projects went to seed. As a result ownership of the area was reclaimed by the city and the Beautification Committee invited tenders for its recultivation in 1808. Palatine Joseph proposed to raise the funds required by levying taxes on himself for 9 or 10 years and by relying on the generosity of Pest’s citizenry. The drainage of the area, called Town Woods at the time, and its conversion into parklands commenced to plans by Henrik Nebbien, the French-born landscape gardener, who was obliged, by financial considerations, to downgrade his ambitious original design. The oldest building of the park (extant to this day, standing opposite the underground station) was one unit of the Nebbien Manors.

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