BUDAPEST CIVITAS

Budapest has been selected by Roberto Amati in relation to the real history of european integration, then enlisted in the CITY OR CIVITAS category, accompanied by own fact SHEET useful to the comprehension, completed of historical MAPS AND IMAGES or with a direct linking to the related Blog contents dedicated to the the aeternitas and the future of Europe.

Budapest is one of the most ancient cities of the history of European integration, signed in great part by Christianity. The first settlement had been of the Celts, immediately followed by the Romans who conquered it and founded Aquincum in I century A.D., making it a strategic point on the ancient roman Aurelia way, starting from Cabillonum (Chalon-sur-Saône) and passing around the whole Alps chain through Augsburg, Wien, Carnuntum and Syrmium (Sremska Mitrovica) to end in Narona (Vid) on the Adriatic Sea.

In origin Budapest was a colonia of the Roman Respublica, inhabited by the locals tribes and Italics legionaries: within the reform of Augustus (see Roman Empire), Budapest became the capital of the Pannonia province on the Danube river and strategically located at the center of the Pannonian Basin lying on ancient trade routes linking with the Great Plain and the East. Today that area corresponds to the Óbuda district, where the Romans constructed roads, amphitheaters, baths and houses with heated floors in this fortified military camp of the civitas, whose archaeological site was turned into a museum with indoor and open-air sections.

With the reform of Constantine I (see Christian Empire), Budapest was included in the imperial Illyricum Diocesis as a big christian community facing Barbarians and Sarmatians assaults coming from over the Limes. During V and VI centuries A.D. Budapest was invaded and ravaged in sequence by the Huns of Attila, the Lombards and the Slavs, who settled in the civitas under the dominion of the Avars until late VIII century A.D.. But at the renovatio imperii of Charlemagne Budapest was included in the OstMark of the Carolingian Empire, before that region was conquered and annexed to the Reign of Great Moravia. Until the Magyars invaded the Pannonnia region at the end of IX centuries A.D. and founded their reign ruled by the Arpad dinasty, pushing the Bulgars out of the Great Plain.

With the crowning of Saint Stephen I as king in the Christmas night of 1000 A.D., it started the millenarian history of the Regnum Hungary in which Budapest was elevated as capital only in the middle of XIV century A.D. when King Béla IV ordered the construction of reinforced stone walls around the towns and set his own royal palace on the top of the protecting hills of Buda, where Germans settlers were invited to rebuild and inhabit both Buda and Pest on the other side of the Danube river. The cultural role of Budapest in Eastern Europe consolidated when Italian Renaissance earned great influence on the city: his library, the Bibliotheca Corviniana, was Europe's greatest collection of historical chronicles and philosophic and scientific works in the XV century A.D. second in size only to the Vatican Library! After the foundation of the first Hungarian university in Pécs in 1367 A.D. followed the one established in Óbuda decades after, while the first Hungarian book was printed in Buda in 1473 A.D. (in Hungarian language). When the Turks occupied Budapest in 1526 A.D. as consequence of the battle of Mohacs where the king Lajos II of Jagelloni dinasty died, many prominent bathing facilities were erected within the city, some of whose are still in use 500 years later, including Rudas Baths and Király Baths. Only 150 years later the Christian forces seized Buda and reconquered the city and all of the former Hungarian lands under command of Prinz Eugene of Savoy, who rescued Budapest and Hungary with the 1699 A.D. Treaty of Karlowitz.

Then it started the second great phase of development in the history of Budapest, lasting until First World War: after the revolutionary mobs of 1848 A.D., defeated with the help of the Russian Empire, the city became the twin capital of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire ruled by the famous emperor Franz Joseph I and his wife the 'Princess Sissy', loved Queen of Hungary-Slovenia-Croatia. At that epoch was built the Chain Bridge linking Buda with Pest as the first permanent bridge across the Danube, symbolizing the definitive merging in 1873 A.D. of 3 parts of Buda and Pest and Óbuda (Old Buda) into the new metropolis of Budapest. So at the beginning of XX century A.D. ethnic Magyars group overtook Germans due to mass migration from the overpopulated rural Transdanubia and Great Hungarian Plain regions, aside the historic large Jewish community of the city, that gave Budapest the surname of 'Jewish Mecca' or 'Judapest'.

Since 1918 A.D. Budapest is the capital of Hungary and of the Central Budapest region, seat of the central government and of various international organizations, including several U.N. agencies like W.H.O. and I.O.M. and of the E.U. headquarters of E.I.T. and CEPOL. While the historic center along the Danube is classified as a UNESCO World Heritage site with its numerous notable monuments of classical architecture: the 13th-century Matthias Church, the Buda Castle and the banks, the Hungarian Parliament, the Castle Hill, the River Danube embankments and the whole of Andrássy út, the State Opera House, the Museum of Fine Arts and the St. Stephen's Basilica. Moreover, Budapest has been a popular spa destination since Roman times and is considered the spa capital of Europe with more than 100 medicinal geothermal springs and the largest thermal water cave system. The city is home to the second-largest synagogue and third-largest parliament building in the world, of over 40 museums and galleries, nearly 10 Michelin-starred restaurants, and named among the 50 best food cities globally for its focus on distinctive Hungarian cuisine. The patron of the city is the former king Saint Stephen celebrated on 20th August.

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