Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
levels are crammed with furniture, porcelain, ironwork, paintings and
objets d'art
. The
lovely
Secessio Café
is on the ground floor.
STATUE
IMRE NAGY STATUE
Southeast of V Kossuth Lajos tér is an unusual statue of Imre Nagy standing in the centre of
a small footbridge. Nagy was the reformist Communist prime minister executed in 1958 for
his role in the uprising two years earlier.
SQUARE
SZABADSÁG TÉR
'Liberty Sq', one of the largest in Budapest, is a few minutes' walk northeast of Széchenyi
István tér. As you enter you'll pass a delightful
fountain
that works on optical sensors and
turns off and on as you approach or back away from it. In the centre of the square is a
Soviet
army memorial
, the last of its type still standing in the city.
On the eastern side is the fortress-like US Embassy, now cut off from the square by high
metal fencing and concrete blocks. It was here that Cardinal József Mindszenty sought
refuge after the 1956 Uprising and stayed for 15 years until departing for Vienna in 1971.
The embassy backs onto Hold utca (Moon St), which, until 1990, was named Rosenberg
házaspár utca (Rosenberg Couple St) after the American husband and wife Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg who were executed as Soviet spies in the US in 1953.
A controversial statue of Miklós Horthy, Hungary's intra-war leader called a hero by the
right wing but reviled as a fascist dictator by many others, was unveiled in front of the
Homecoming Presbyterian Church
(Hazatérés Református Templom) in the square's
southwest corner in late 2013.
MONUMENT
SHOES ON THE DANUBE
Along the banks of the river between Széchenyi István tér and Parliament is a monument to
Hungarian Jews shot and thrown into the Danube by members of the fascist Arrow Cross
Party in 1944. Entitled
Shoes on the Danube
(Cipők a Dunaparton) by sculptor Gyula Pauer
and film director Can Togay, it's a simple but poignant display of 60 pairs of old-style boots
and shoes in cast iron, tossed higgledy-piggledy on the bank of the river.
