These towns then experienced a rapid development, their real centre being formed by the Fortress Hill, on which King Bela IV erected a magnificent castle and church, and the Kings Robert Carl, Sigismund and Mathias also built several superb palaces. This flourishing period reached its zenith under Mathias Corvinus. whose splendid residence became the meeting-place of numerous scholars, artists and diplomatists, and who for a considerable period directed the destinies of Europe.

This world-celebrated splendour gave way to a period of dark servitude. In 1541, through strategy and treason, Buda fell into the hands of the Turks, and the following 145 years of Mohammedan yoke, almost entirely depopulated and destroyed the two Danube towns. On the 2nd September 1686, however, they were reconquered, amidst the acclamations of all civilized Europe -- but the conquering army found nothing but a mere heap of ruins inhabited by a few hundred souls. Only at the beginning of the eighteenth Century -- when at last an abiding peace was established, did the two towns gradually begin to recover. Under Charles III, Maria Theresa and Joseph II, public institutions sprang up, offices and authorities were established, and business flourished; and in exaggerated national pride Pest began to be regarded as the London of Hungary, although Pest and Buda together under Joseph II numbered barely 50,000 inhabitants, while the population of London at that time was almost a million. The time of really greatest development came at the beginning of the nineteenth Century, when Archduke Joseph, the immemorable Palatine of Hungary, devoted all his force and energy to the improvement of the two towns. In his time and on the initiative of Count Stephen Szechenyi arose the chief evidences of culture: the National Museum, the Academy of Sciences and the National Theatre. The sublime genius of the noble Count -- the Greatest Hungarian, -- penetrated and stirred the population of the sister towns and indeed the whole nation, which made incomparable sacrifices for the foundation of its culture and of its material welfare. Even the awful flood catastrophe in the year 1838, which destroyed almost three thousand houses, only momentarily paralysed this mighty advance of the general culture; the decade following this inundation was the epoch of a rapid flourishing of industry, business, literature and art. The world-famed Suspension Bridge, and the first railways were completed during this period; and if the mournful issue of the war of liberty in 1848--1849, had not thrown the capital decades backwards, the flourishing period of Budapest might have continued unchecked.

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Adapted from Illustrated Description of Hungary and its Capital