Excavations suggest that the site of the capital was inhabited as long ago as the fourth millennium BC. Theres were communities here during the Bronze and Iron ages, including
Celts who arrived in the 4
thcentury BC and constructed a citadel on
Gellért Hill. In around 35 BC the area’s strategic advantages were properly exploited for the first time when the
Romans extended their imperial boundary eastward to the Danube, occupying the Celtic settlement of Ak-Ink (adopting the Latinised form of Aquincum).
A legionary camp was established in today’s Óbuda and a civilian town to its north; the river formed a natural barrier to attacks from Asiatic tribes, and a couple of advanced fortified positions were constructed on the other bank – inluding Contra-Aquincum, remains of which still stand in Március 15 tér. Aquincum flourished and became the capital of Pannonia Inferior, one half of the Roman province of Pannonia; as provincial governor, Hadrian built himself a palace on Shipyard Island.
During the 4th century the empire declined, and the Romans finally abandoned Buda at the beginning of the 5th century. This triggered the second age of migrations as peoples from the east moved into the Carpathian Basin. 
Initially the Huns filled the vacuum under the notorious Attila, follewed by others tribes including the Avars and the Slavs. Seven tribes of Magyars – ancestors of the contemporary population – arrived in 895-896 AD, probably from lands between the River Volga and the Urals; these skilled horsemen fanned out across the region, the chieftain Árpád settling in Hungary.
It was under the Árpád dynasty and King István (crowned in 1000) that the country became a Christian state, the king ruthlessly dispatching of claimants to the throne and recognising the unifying potential of the chrurch. His right hand is a a holy relic on display in Szt István Basilica. Budapest actually lacked real clout at this point for the religious centre was in Esztergom and the royal palace in Székesfehérvár.
István’s only son Imre was killed in a hunting accident, and so the king’s death in 1038 sparked a lengthy period of instability between a succession of feeble kings and the nobilty; it was in the immediate aftermath that pagans stuffed Bishop Gellért, Imre’s spiritual tutor, into a spiked barrel and tossed him from the hill that now bears his name. In 1222 the ’Golden Bull’ was signed, a sort of Magna Carta that acknowledged Hungary as a nation, decreed a yearly meeting ( Diet) of nobles in Pest and curtailed the powers of the king. Trade began to thrive on both sides of the river ( at the time separate towns ), but the good times were swiftly curtailed by the Mongol Invasion of 1241 –42, when the country was razed and vast swathes of the population massacred.
King Béla IV ( 1235-70) returned from exile determined to protect Hungary from future hostility. He fortified Castle Hill, moved the populations of Buda and Pest behind the safety of its walls, and doing so was lauded as the second state founder. Castle Hills was subsequently ranked a city and named Buda ( the area to its north relegated to Óbuda – ’Old Buda’), while Pest developed a commercial centre and attracted immigrant craftsmen from other corners of Europe.
The Golden Age
At the beginning of the 14th century, the Árpád line petered out with the death of the heirless András III. The ensuing power struggle was won by Károly Robert (1308-42), a French Angevin king with the backing of the pope. It was under the Angevin kings that the royal court was moved from Visegrád to Buda.
Subsequent monarchs enlarged upon the regal residence, in particular Zsigmond of Luxembourg ( 1387 –1437) who const-ructed the beautiful Gothic Friss Palace.
Zsigmond’s reign coincided with Turkish expansionist ambitions in Europe; the Ottoman advance was halted at the Battle of Nándorfehérvár ( now Belgrade) in 1456, when Hungary’s greatest general, Prince János Hunyadi achieved a famous victory.
Pope Callixtus III declared that the noon Angelus should be prayed, and church bells rung across Catholic Europe in grateful remembrance. Hunyadi succumbed to the plague shortly afterwards, but in 1458 his teenage son Mátyás ( 1458-90) took the throne. 
His reign proved something of a historical purple patch. The economy prospered, and Mátyás and his Italian wife Beatrice made Buda one of the centres of Renaissance art and learning. For men of letters, he put together a stunning library in one wing of the palace; for men of action, he set up the Black Army, one of Europe’s first professional units.
There was the familiar feudal infighting following Mátyás’s demise, climaxing in the Peasant Revolt of 1514. The revolt united the ruling classes, who savagely crushed the peasants – the leader György Dózsa was burnt to death on a metal throne – and enforced a Tripartitum law that reduced the peasants to the status of serfs. Such turbulence, though, was nothing compared with that to come.
First Turks, then Habsburgs
For Hungarians, August 29 1526 is the most tragic date in a past littered with them. On that day the Turks obliterated the Magyars army at Mohács in southern Hungary. Fifteen years later the Ottomans had conquered Buda, Óbuda and Pest, and settled in for the long haul.
During their 150-year stay they built little of lasting value beyond thermal baths, some of which remain today, and Buda stagnated under the pashas. 
There were several attempts to re-take Buda before a European army united under the command of Archduke Charles of Austria and Prince-Elector Maximilian of Bavaria eventually vanquished the Turks in 1686, after a siege that lasted months. Buda was reduced to rubble by the fighting, and Pest was by now a vitual ghost town. The combined population of the three towns was just 1,000.
There was a massive process of rebuilding and re-population ahead ( the latter with German, Greek, Italian, French, Slovak and Serbian settlers, as well as Hungarians from other parts of the country). However, Hungary still hadn’t secured freedom – it had merely swapped one master for another.
The Catholic Habsburgs placed Hungary under military rule, rigorously persecuting Protestants and determi-nedly undermining the privileges of the native nobility. At the start of the 18th century, during the
War of the Spanish Succession, the country embarked on an eight-year rebellion led by Prince
Ferenc Rákóczi.
The struggle eventually failed, but Rákóczi had been the first to draw together all Hungarians in opposition to Habsburg rule.
After the wars, the Habsburgs invested heavily in developing the towns, and the enlightened absolutism of rulers like Empress Maria Theresa ( 1740-80) led to a period of sustained growth. Pest became an important trading centre and a wealthy town, attracting fresh groups of immigrants including , Germans, Italians, Greeks, Macedo-vlachs, Jews and Serbs. The first decades of the 19th century also witnessed the so-called Age of Reform, in large part spurred by Count István Széchenyi – ’ the greatest Hungarian’. His broad, progressive bourgeois vision was influenced by visits to England, and he inspired the construction of the Chain Bridge, the founding of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the laying of the first railway line. It was also during this period that Pest took on its current face. The Great Flood of 1838 had an affect as dramatic as London’s fire of 1666, flattening the neo-classical and baroque dwellings and making way for the broad Parisian boulevards that replaced them. Some surviving churces bear markers recording the height reached by the waters.
This all coincided with turbulence in Europe and a revival of nationalist feeling in Hungary. On March 15 1848 Revolution broke out on Pest’s streets, its spokesmen the poet Sándor Petőfi and his fellow radicals. A National Assembly convened in Pest, led by Kossuth Lajos who spearheaded the War of Independence.
The Habsburgs prevailed in 1849 after Emperor Ferenc József ( 1848-1916) enlisted the help of a Russian force.
Petőfi had died in battle and Kossuth went into exile. Lajos Bathhyány, the first independent prime minister, was executed. The Habsburgs built a citadel looking down from the Buda bank, and the Hungarians were rudely awoken from their dreams of freedom.
However, renewed hope came more swiftly than expected. The Austrians suffered several defeats to Italian, French and Prussian armies, and – anxious to shore up the Habsburg empire – acceded to an agreement drawn up by the liberal politician Ferenc Deák. The Compromise of 1867 established a dual monarchy, whereby Hungary had its own government, parliament and small army, but operated jointly with Austria in matters of foreign policy and defence. In 1873 Buda, Óbuda and Pest were unified to form Budapest, a union that had been developed a capitalist infrastructure, and the population grew rapidly; Pest became a place of great municipal construction and the hub of the empire’s rail system, and cultural output rivalled that of Vienna. This spirit of energy and independence was evident during the millennial celebrations of 1896 commemorating the Magyar Conquest. A great exhibtion featured 220 halls showcasing Hungarian achievements.
The World Wars
The Austro-Hungarian empire was decisively defeated in World War I, and the Habsburg monarchy collapsed.
In the aftermath, a short-lived communist regime known as the Republic of Councils was established for 133 days under Béla Kun – using ’Red Terror’ to impose nationalisation of the land.
On June 4 1920 Hungary was forced by the victorious powers to sign the uncompromising Trity of Trianon, which handed two-thirds of its territory to neighbouring countries that even included Austria.
Three million Magyars found themselves sudden exiles in foreign states. This division of countryman from countryman had a lasting impact on Hungarian culture and sense of self, and the memory of ’Greater Hungary’-
and the current treatment of ethnic Hungarians in Romania and Slovakia, Serbia, – remains a hot topic to this day.
In November 1919 Admiral Miklós Horthy rode into Budapest at the head of a counter-revolutionary army. Kun Béla fled abroad, later was executed by Stalin, and on March I 1920 Horthy was elected Regent ( as the self-declared representative of exiled Habsburg Emperor Karl IV). His policies were conservative, his primary aim was to retrieve the lands stripped from Hungary at Trianon.
In 1941 Horthy supported Germany in the unprovoked attack upon Yugoslavia. Hungary was rewarded with the return of some lost lands. When Horthy secretly entered into negotiation with the Allies, the Germans learned of the betrayal and occupied the country in March 1944. A ghetto was established in the area around the Great Synagogue and troopers executed Jews on the Danube banks.
The actions of the Catholic Church and Raoul Wallenberg, Carl Lutz and many Hungarians saved them from the wholesale deportation that occurred in the rest of the country. Budapest was surrounded on December 24 1944, and Hitler ordered the 22, 000 mainly SS troops to defend it to the last soldier; on February 12 1945, down to just 1,800 they finally succumbed. Three-quarters of Budapest’s buildings bore the scars of battle, over a third were destroyed and appr. 25, 000 civilians had been killed.
The communist years
The communists came to power in 1947. Mátyás Rákosi imposed a Stalinist dictatorship between 1947 and 1953, emulating his mentor in the brutal use of spies, torture and murder. Rákosi’s position was undermined by Stalin’s death in 1953 and Imre Nagy a reformist in the Communist Party took over as prime minister. On October 23 1956 a student demonstration were fired upon by members of secret police (ÁVO) and peaceful protest flared into revolution. The statue of Stalin that stood to the south of City Park was broken to pieces. Imre Nagy set up an administration, declared the country’s withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, and looked hopefully to the West for recognition and assistance. However, Western power were focused upon Suez crisis, and – after bloody street fighting – Soviet tanks brutally suppressed the revolution. János Kádár was placed in charge; 26,000 people were arrested, more than 2,000 executed, and many more shipped off to labour camps. Nagy was exterminated two years later.
In 1989 the Communist Party announced that there would be free elections. In 1990 the communists were voted out. On May I 2004 Hungary became a member of the European Union.
Hungary has a proud cultural history therefore the first thing to ask yourself is ’On which side of the river am I’ ?
The city is divided in two by the Danube, which runs through here for 28km and is spanned by eight road and two rail bridges.
If you are among narrow streets or leafy hills to the west, you are in Buda, which makes up a third of the city;
if you are in the more built-up area to the east, with shops, business, broad boulevards and squares, you are in Pest.
Administratively, Budapest is carved into 23 districts. The tourist is most likely to spend time in districts V ( the downtown), I ( where you will find the Castle District), VI ( Terézváros with Andrássy út), XIV ( home of City Park), III ( where the Roman ruins of Aquincum lie) and II and XII ( the Buda hills).
