Budapest [antikvár]

An old port, an old haven, an old royal free borough whose rich past reaches back to the distant centuries of the Román Empire, Budapest lies on two banks of the Danube, the most beautiful river in Europe. And although this city is located deep within the heart of Europe, the Danube connects it, Üke so many others, with the sea. Originally, Budapest was three separate towns-Óbuda, Buda and Pest, which were united in 1872, and which, through the years, became a truly major capital city. But even before the Romans came, the caves of Buda, its forests rich in game and vegetation, the thermal springs of its gently rolling hills sloping down to the Danube attracted many settlers. Later the Román legions camped by the Danube, on the site of today's Óbuda, and soon their camp grounds developed into Aquincum, the capital of the province of Lower Pannónia. Its massive walls, however, were razed to the ground by the resurgent waves of the Great Migrations and were consequently buried under the mud of Danubian floods. Luckily, the 2oth century has uncovered the ancient routes and atriums, the foundations of the Román castrums, so that today Aquincum stands on the bank of the Danube as a song of praise to the past. The ruins of that most important Roman-age establishment, the amphitheatre, whose aréna was fiiled over a thousand years ago by the motley tents of the conquering Magyars, alsó stand today as a robust reminder of Antique culture. During the Middle Ages, the status of Buda as a city grew: it won the rights of a port and of holding régiónál fairs from the kings. In the wake of the terrible ravages of the Mongol Invasion, the construction of the Castle of Buda (1247) was begun, whose stormy history has defined the lives and fates of the merchants, craftsmen, grape-growers