Homage to the Eighth District [antikvár]

The tourist who sets out to visit Budapest, a principal city of an empire non-existent for over half a centuiy, but still remembered for the gaiety of its leading citizens and the mulüplicity of its peoples, could stumble upon the Eighth District only by mistake. Getting down at the East Station, he would have to meander along one of the narrowest and darkest ways, all cobbled with granite, which open off Rákóczy Avenue, to the left of those leading towards the city centre. There he will fmd no monuments, no famous sites nor vivacious quartiers. Peeling facades, still bearing traces of their original decor, but untouched for aknost a centuiy, will greet him with indifference; and the people coming and going through the entrances or along the street will appear no less indifferent, even though bearing in their eyes strange lamps of anxiety. This is no place to visit with a light heart, but with one full of suffering, of sadness, even of abjection. After following several streets, however, the visitor might come across large squares filled with trees: for the Eighth District was created, towards the end of the last centuiy, as a clean and spacious quarter, ready to offer dignified comfort to its bourgeois inhabitants. The urban planners of the time had conceived of it almost as an ideal