5 interesting facts you didn’t know about Budapest’s attractions!
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Budapest and its famous sights have been the subject of millions of photos, Facebook posts and blog entries, and deservedly so. One would think we know everything owing to our class trip in elementary school and we only show off the city’s great classics to our foreign friends. However, the tourist magnets still have some surprises.
Divers are searching under the city centre
A few hundred metres from Margaret Island, in the heart of a densely populated district, there is an underwater cave. It can only be accessed by divers with special permit. It has not been fully explored by today, although János Molnár, the apothecary after whom the cave is named, already assumed in the 1860 after analysing the water of the Buda springs, that the caverns in the side of the mountain concealed a sizeable underwater cave system.
The already explored stretch of the cave is 5.5 km long and has a depth of 80 metres below the water level. Its water is fed by both thermal water from the deep and cold karst water from Buda. The processes that form the thermal cavescan still be studied today. The cave contains the world’s largest thermal water chamber with a height (or depth?) of 20-25 metres.
The Zoo is also a nature conservation area
One of the main tourist attractions, the Zoo is not only one of Europe’s oldest zoos, dating back to 1866, but also a nature conservation area. The first recorded plant is a Canadian poplar from 1910 (next to the South America Run), but in total there are 60 protected plant species alongside the animals. The National Bonsai Collection is also located here. The total notional value of the zoo’s protected plant collection exceeds half a billion forints.
The construction of the Basilica even gave rise to a saying
If you walk towards the Basilica from the direction of the Opera House, you may notice thatthe church has its back to Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Street. The main entrance opens onto a much less busy square, not to mention the surrounding streets where there is not enough room for tourists during the peak season. Why?
Starting from the foundation stone in 1851 to its consecration in 1905, the Basilica was built for over 50 years. This is the period when Pest-Buda became a metropolis. The population grew by leaps and bounds, palaces and boulevards mushroomed. The pace of this growth can be measured by the fact that by the time the church was finished, it was practically located in a different city, with new centres and emphases. Budapest was built that much faster than the Basilica.
Of course, it did not help that, due to structural and material defects, the half-finished building collapsed in 1868, andthree years were spent only to clean up the ruins. In any case, if a person borrowed money from someone else at the time and said, “I will pay you back when the Basilica is built”, the lender could not expect much good to come of it because by then it meant never. But finally, in 1905, the church was duly inaugurated and consecrated – although rumour has it that Franz Joseph was somewhat anxiously scanning the ceiling during the ceremony.
