Monday 12 May 2014

Budapest, Hungary (May 2014)



Budapest is the capital and the largest city of Hungary, and one of the largest cities in the European Union. It is the country's principal political, cultural,commercial, industrial, and transportation centre, sometimes described as the primate city of Hungary.

According to the census, in 2011 Budapest had 1.74 million inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2.1 million due to suburbanisation. The Budapest Metropolitan Area is home to 3.3 million people. The city covers an area of 525 square kilometres (203 sq mi).

Budapest became a single city occupying both banks of the river Danube with the unification of Buda and Óbuda on the west bank, with Pest on the east bank on 17 November 1873.

The history of Budapest began with Aquincum, originally a Celtic settlemen that became the Romancapital of Lower Pannonia. Hungarians arrived in the territory in the 9th century. Their first settlement was pillaged by the Mongols in 1241–42. 

The re-established town became one of the centres of Renaissance humanist culture by the 15th century. Following the Battle of Mohács and nearly 150 years of Ottomanrule, the region entered a new age of prosperity in the 18th and 19th centuries, and Budapest became aglobal city after its unification in 1873.

It also became the second capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, agreat power that dissolved in 1918, following World War I. Budapest was the focal point of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848, the Hungarian Republic of Councils in 1919, the Battle of Budapest in 1945, and the Revolution of 1956.

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