Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Árpád dynasty
Civilization developed gradually after Árpád's great-grandson
PrinceGéza
established links
with Bavaria and invited Catholic missionaries to Hungary. His son
Stephen
(István) took
the decisive step of applying to Pope Sylvester for recognition, and on Christmas Day in the
year 1000 AD was crowned as a Christian king. With the help of the Italian Bishop Gellért,
he then set about converting his pagan subjects. Stephen was subsequently credited with the
foundationofHungary
and canonized after his death in 1038. His mummified hand and the
crown of St Stephen have since been revered as both holy and national relics, and are today
some of Budapest's most popular tourist attractions.
Despite succession struggles after Stephen's death, a lack of external threats during the el-
eventh and twelfth centuries enabled the
developmentofBudaandPest
to begin in earnest,
largely thanks to French, Walloon and German settlers who worked and traded here under
royal protection. However, the growth in royal power caused tribal leaders to rebel in 1222,
and Andrew II was forced to recognize the noble status and rights of the
nation
- landed
freemen exempt from taxation - in the Golden Bull, a kind of Hungarian Magna Carta.
Andrew's son
Béla IV
tried to restore royal authority, but the
Mongol invasion
of 1241
devastated the country and left even the royal palace of Esztergom in ruins. Only the timely
death of Ghengis Khan spared Hungary from further ravages. Mindful of a return visit, Béla
selected the
Vár
as a more defensible seat and encouraged foreign artisans to rebuild Buda,
which German colonists called “
Ofen
” after its numerous lime-kilns (the name Pest, which is
of Slav origin, also means “oven”).
Renaissance and decline
After the Árpád dynasty expired in 1301, foreign powers advanced their own claims to
the throne and for a while there were three competing kings, all duly crowned. Eventually
Charles Robert
of the French Angevin (or Anjou) dynasty triumphed. Peacetime gave him
the opportunity to develop the gold mines of Transylvania and northern Hungary - the richest
in Europe - and Charles bequeathed a robust exchequer to his son
Louis the Great
, whose
reign saw the population of Hungary rise to three million, and the crown territories expand
to include much of what are now Croatia and Poland. The oldest extant strata of the Buda
Palace on the Vár date from this time.
After Louis' demise, the throne was claimed by
SigismundofLuxembourg
, Prince of Bo-
hemia, whom the nobility despised as the “Czech swine”. His failure to check the advance
of the Turks through the Balkans was only redeemed by the Transylvanian warlord
János
Hunyadi
, whose lifting of the siege of Belgrade caused rejoicing throughout Christendom.
Vajdahunyad Castle in the Városliget is a romantic nineteenth-century replica of Hunyadi's
ancestral seat in Transylvania.
