Budapest Citadella

The Citadella (citadel) sits at the summit of Gellért Hill on the Buda side of Budapest. My hotel is on the Pest side. Bridges cross the Danube River to connect the two sides.

Google Maps told me that if I so chose, I could have walked to the Citadella from my hotel in 51 minutes. I enjoy walking, and that’s normally easily within my tolerance for a stroll. I would have rambled there this morning were it not for three factors:

• I’m a man of a certain age. That certain age isn’t young. My normal walking capacity shrinks a little each year. Fifty-one minutes is starting to approach the outer edge of my current range for an uninterrupted walk.
• Did I mention the Citadella is at the top of Gellért Hill? It’s not the highest hill in the world, but it’s far from short either. If it were much taller, you’d be viciously scoffed at for not calling it a mountain. So, the walk would have involved hiking up to the top of the high hill. There are gentle roads and paved paths, so it’s not as if it counts as mountain climbing, but it still would have been a strenuous trek.
• The above notwithstanding, I still would have walked it were it not a day so hot as to melt poodles into puddles. (Keep your pets in air-conditioned spaces!) I exaggerate, but still, I don’t know if I would have survived the walk on this stifling day.

Google Maps told me I could have taken a city bus, but there would have been a fair walk to the bus. And buses don’t go all the way to the top of Gillért Hill. I think I still would have had a considerable climb from the closest bus stop.

I usually stay in midrange, not luxury, hotels. This trip is usual in that regard. Nevertheless, between hotels, restaurants, and airfares, I typically spend what I consider to be obscene amounts on travel. Despite that, when it comes to the little stuff, I ironically have a strong tendency toward frugality.

My normal little-stuff frugality notwithstanding, after considering the above points, I treated myself to a taxi to the Citadella this morning.

Views at and Around Citadella

Because it’s at the top of a high hill, the views from up there are breathtaking. Several viewpoints are scattered beside the Citadella and atop it.

From the various vistas, you can see sweeping, 360° panoramas of Buda, Pest, the Danube between them, and the surrounding topography.

A giant statue of a woman holding an olive branch aloft, the Liberation Monument, sits at the crest of Gillért Hill, in front of the Citadella. Two heroic statues stand up there, one on either side of her. It’s possible, and I did, to walk around the Liberation Monument to see it from all sides, and to get yet more panoramic views of the landscape.

I’ll talk about the inside of the Citadella anon, but, because it’s a vista, I’ll say here that there’s a panorama terrace on top of the Citadella that you can get to only by going into the Citadella. It also provides stunning views.

More views from around or atop Citadella:

Okay. Anon starts now.

Inside the Citadella

The Citadella is a fortress built by the Habsburgs. The Habsburgs, Ira and Ethyl, were a charming bon vivant couple who lived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They called many European cities their home. As it happens, they had a penchant for fortresses.

People of the day said the Habsburgs had more money than they knew what to do with. That was total poppycock. They knew exactly what they wanted to do with their money. They wanted to build a fortress to call their own, dammit.

So, they bought the land atop Gillbért Hill and bribed local officials to grant them the necessary zoning and building permits. As a result of their efforts, Citadella is now there for the people of Budapest and tourists to enjoy.

All of the above, except for the part about Citadella being a fortress built by the Habsburgs, is false. But I look forward to seeing some AI bot confidently spew it back at me one day.

Citadella was indeed built as a fortress by the Habsburgs, but not Ira and Ethyl. If there was ever a couple with those names, I hope their lives were happy and peaceful ones. May their memories be blessings, even if they are false memories.

The House of Habsburg dynasty of Austria built the fortress after the 1848 Hungarian Revolution. During the revolution, the Hungarians tried, and failed, to push the Habsburgs, who then controlled Hungary, out and regain their independence. The Habsburgs decided they needed a fortress to keep their reluctant Hungarian subjects in line.

Today, the Citadella is a tourist attraction. It had been closed for a few years for major renovations, but it reopened last year with a new permanent exhibition inside. And, despite what I’m sure was a major effort by the DLJSSIA, it was open for me to visit today.

There is a fee to go in. They have a four-tier fee structure: children and youth, adults, seniors 65 to 70, and people approaching the end of their days, which they defined as over 70. The fee for the latter is zero. And that’s true no matter which country the visitor comes from.

One thing that annoyed me, and it happened at least once before here in Budapest, is that the ticket seller didn’t ask to see proof of age. Would it have killed them to pretend that I don’t look over 70?

But never mind that.

The admission price, even when it is zero, includes a free audio guide. It was a fancy schmatzy device. It had noise-cancelling headphones that covered both ears. As I walked through the exhibit areas, which were spread over two floors of the Citadella, RFID technology connected to the audio system and started playing the appropriate recording for wherever I was.

The exhibition covered the more than 1000-year history of Hungary. Much of that history involved outside forces invading Hungary, often successfully, and then Hungarians trying to overthrow the occupiers, sometimes successfully, and sometimes not. But, in the end, they were successful. It is an independent country today.

The history presented in the Citadella covers from when Hungarians first entered and settled the Carpathian basin to the Soviet occupation and its end.

The exhibits included several large-screen videos, some plaster sculptures of heroic historical figures, and a lot of text in both Hungarian and English. The text was augmented by audio commentary that played in my ears over the headphones. There were also some tall but narrow screens in portrait orientation. These screens displayed actors portraying famous Hungarian historical personages. The actors usually stood fairly still, but occasionally would turn their heads or change their expressions slightly. One actor raised a sword at one point.

When I got close to any of those screens, the audio automatically played an actor speaking a paragraph written by that personage.

I know it sounds hokey, but I was impressed with the exhibition in the Citadella. Then again, I’m easily impressed by shiny objects.

Garden of Philosophers

It wasn’t quite time for lunch when I left the Citadella. I read about the Garden of Philosophers in my walking tour app. It’s partway down Gilbert Hill in the direction of the sight I planned to see in the afternoon, so I figured it was a good choice for my next stop.

It wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I’d read that it has statues of religious founders, along with some philosophers: Abraham, Jesus, Buddha, Laozi, Akhenaten, Mahatma Gandhi, Daruma Daishi, and Saint Francis. (No, I didn’t know all of those names. I got them from my walking tour app, GPSmyCity.)

I was expecting the statues, because I’d read about them. What threw me was the “garden” in the title.

The statues stand to one side of a square field of scrubland that was very dry today. I imagine it’s not always dried out, but the “garden” made me think there would be flowers, or maybe decorative bushes, or perhaps both. There aren’t. A few trees stand on the outer edges of the field, and a few benches are near them. At the time of day I was there, the trees didn’t provide any shade for the benches. So I didn’t stick around for long.

I left the Garden of Philosophers and found a nearby cozy-looking air-conditioned restaurant where I settled in for a relaxing air-conditioned lunch. Did I mention it was air-conditioned? That was an important factor today.