Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 5: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Switzerland, Part 1
History
Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 5: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Switzerland, Part 1
Austria -- Description and travel; Germany -- Description and travel; Switzerland -- Description and travel
Budapest is one of the most beautifully situated cities in Europe.
Nobody can ever forget the wonderful sight of the two sister towns
divided by the wide and swiftly flowing Danube, with the steamers and
barges on her waters. Buda, the old stronghold, is on one side with the
fantastic "Gellért" hill, which is a formidable-looking mass of rocks
and caves; farther on is the lovely royal palace with its beautifully
kept gardens clinging to the hillside; then the oldest part, called the
stronghold, which has been rebuilt exactly in the style Matthias
Corvinus built it, and which was demolished during the Turkish invasion.
Here is the old church of Matthias too, but it is so much renovated that
it lacks the appearance of age. Behind the smaller hills larger ones
are to be seen covered with shady woods; these are the villa regions and
summer excursion places for the people.
Along the Danube are green and shady islands of which the most beautiful
is St. Margaret's Isle, and on the other side of the waters is the city
of "Pest," with the majestic Houses of Parliament, Palace of Justice,
Academy of Science, and numerous other fine buildings. At the present
time four bridges join the two cities together, and a huge tunnel leads
through the first hill in Buda into another part of the town. One can
not say which is the more beautiful sight: to look from Pest, which
stands on level ground, up to the varying hilly landscape of Buda; or to
look from the hillside of the latter place on to the fairy-land of Pest,
with the broad silver Danube receding in the distance like a great
winding snake, its scales all aglitter in the sunshine. It is beautiful
by day, but still more so at night, for myriads of lights twinkle in the
water, and the hillsides are dotted as if with flitting fairy-lamps.
Even those who are used to the sight look at it in speechless rapture
and wonder. What must it be like to foreigners!
Besides her splendid natural situation, Budapest has another great
treasure, and this is the great quantity of hot sulfur springs which
exists on both sides of the Danube. The Romans made use of these at the
time of their colonization, and we can find the ruins of the Roman baths
in Aquincum half an hour from Budapest. During the Turkish rule many
Turkish baths were erected in Buda. The Rudas bath exists to this day,
and with its modernized system is one of the most popular. Császár bath,
St. Lukács bath, both in Buda, have an old-established reputation for
the splendid cures of rheumatism. A new bath is being built in Pest
where the hot sulfur water oozes up in the middle of the park--the same
is to be found in St. Margaret's Isle. Besides the sulfur baths there
are the much-known bitter waters in Buda called "Hunyady" and "Franz
Joseph," as well as salt baths.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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