Budapest [antikvár]

The bridge an iinceasing wonder.; the bridge ofnations and national regions Just as Nelson's Column and the Tower and Westminster Abbey have come to symbolize London, and the Notre-Dame, the Eiffel Tower and the Moulin Rouge have become indelibly one with the spirit of Paris, so the Statue of Liberty on Gellérthegy, the Millennial Monument on Heroes' Square and the Houses of Parliament have become synonymous | with the city of Budapest. Still, were it up to me, it would be a bridge, tbe bridge, of which the writer Antal Szerb wrote: "How much beauty there is in the Chain Bridge, what elegant restraint, what humility, what endearing lightness and antique melancholy! Somehow definitive, as every great creation is, one feels that yes, this is it, this is what a bridge should be." The story of the Chain Bridge goes back to 1820, when Pest, lying on the leit bank of the Danube, burst out of the confines of its medieval city walls to become a fast-growing industrial and commercial city. Its narrow streets, tiny marketplaces and noblemen's palaces were now rivaled by baroque-inspired public buildings, taverns, inns and cafés, many of the latter opened with the University youth in mind. On the riverbank stood the tanners' and dyers' houses; over the water rose heavy dust clouds and the pervasive odor of raw leather. Beyond the city, toward the east, stood a wasteland once ravaged by Turkish and Tartar armies, then by Austrian mercenary forces; and beyond that stood the villages of serfs, noblemen's mansions and peasant towns with sprawling fields. The right bank of the Danube, where the city of Buda stood, provided a picture of startiing contrast. On Castle Hill, above the siege-worn ruins of the gothic and Renaissance palace of Hungary's former kings, there now stood the baroque residence of : 4. The Chain Bridge seen from Castle Hill. 5. Pest and Buda with the Chain Bridge. 19th century lithograph. the Habsburgs surrounded by a ring of Austrian military barracks; further along the hill stood medieval houses rebuilt in the baroque style. At the bottom of the hill sprawled the quarters of the Serbian and Greek merchants, of fishermen, and Swabian grape growers. Beyond the baths built by the Turks and almost merged with Watertown stood Óbuda, the third town, made up almost entirely of houses, huddled among ancient Román and medieval ruins, of Germán gardeners and small-time craítsmen. To the west, beyond the ornate cities fiiled with noble palaces and bishops' residences, beyond the vast latifundia and the woods teeming with highwaymen, lay Vienna, the Imperial city, and beyond that, the Europe of the Holy Alliance and the 6. Laying the Foundation Stone of the Chain Bridge on 24 August, 1842. Watercolor by Miklós Barabás. nascent, unfolding Industrial Revolution... The two banks of the river with its two worlds were connected by just one narrow link - the Pest-Buda pontoon bridge, which was raised at noon and eventide to afford passage to the horsedrawn grain barges slowly moving upstream. At these tiines, both banks were crowded with long lines of markét wagons, longdistance carriages, mail coaches and multitudes of people traveling on foot, all crowded together, and waiting their turn to cross. Then, as winter approached, the bridge was dismantled, and its 46 pontoons were stored on the Pest bank until the ice floes receded. The narrow umbilical cord between eastern and western Europe was, for a time, severed. In December of 1820, a young Hussar captain on his way to his father's funeral had to wait on the Pest bank of the river for an entire week, for he could not find a way across the drifting ice. The officer was Count István Széchenyi, one of the nation's wealthiest noblemen. In his diary he wrote: "I would gladly give a year's income to have a permanent bridge built between Buda and Pest." On a subsequent trip to England, Széchenyi (who later gave an entire a year's income, if not for the bridge, but for the foundation of the Hungárián Academy of Sciences), made the acquaintance of William Tierney Clark, the designer of the irón bridge at Mena, and in the year 1837 a stockholding company was created with the express purpose of "constructing, at its own expense, a two-column suspension bridge able to withstand continual traffic." Only the commoners paid toll on the Pest-Buda pontoon bridge; noblemen, clergymen and city burghers were exempt. On the planned bridge, on the other hand, everyone would have to pay, otherwise no one would undertake to build it. In short, the bridge became a political issue from the outset. Somé straight-