Online Mortgage Advisor has analysed hundreds of streets and more than 2,400 buildings to reveal which city has the most attractive buildings. According to the portal, Budapest is the 7th most beautiful city when it comes to architecture.
How can the beauty of buildings be measured?
Online Mortgage Advisor measured the beauty of the buildings by scanning Google Street View for front-facing photos. These include the most iconic buildings of historical cities around the world. After this, they plotted points at the corners of every building in their sample of imagery and calculated the proportion of the longest and shortest lengths of its dimensions. Lastly, they compared the proportions to the golden ratio (1:1.618) to see how well they matched.
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What is the golden ratio of buildings?
The golden ratio is 1:1.618 and can be found in nature, in the measurements of the human body, in flowers, or in DNA. In addition, it can also apply to buildings. As marieclaire.hu writes, beauty can be quantified by the ancient Greeks’ law of the golden ratio. Many artists use the golden ratio to make architecture as perfect as possible. They believe it is a gold standard in natural aesthetic perfection. Therefore, experts used the golden ratio to find out which city has the most stunning buildings.
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Budapest takes the 7th place
With a beauty score of 83.3 percent, Venice tops the ranking. Budapest has won 7th place, which is considered a very good position in the ranking.
The top 10 cities are the following:
- Venice 83.3 percent
- Rome 82 percent
- Barcelona 81.9 percent
- Prague 78.7 percent
- New York 77.7 percent
- Athens 77.5 percent
- Budapest 75.9 percent
- Vienna 75.8 percent
- Bordeaux 75.3 percent
- Milan 75.1 percent
Architectural styles in Budapest
It is no surprise that Budapest is in the top ten on the list of cities with the most attractive buildings. As colore.hu writes, Budapest has got six mains architectural styles: Baroque, Classicism, Romanticism, Historicism, Art Nouveau, Modernism. During a significant part of the reign of the Habsburgs, the Baroque was the dominant architectural style. For example, the famous Buda Castle was built in Baroque style. Between 1800 and the 1840s, Classicism began to spread and the Hungarian National Museum was constructed following its principles. As for Romanticism, the Dohány Street Synagogue is a beautiful example of this era. However, the most famous building in Hungary, the Parliament was built in the Historicism style. For tourists, the Danubius Hotel Gellért built in Art Nouveau is a perfect choice of accommodation. Moreover, visitors can admire the so-called Bauhaus or Modernism on Napraforgó Street.
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Source: colore.hu, marieclaire.hu, Online Mortgage Advisor
Parliament was built in the Historicism style- umm excuse me. “Historicism in architecture often entails Revivals of various kinds, i.e., the reference to or use of historical styles and motifs. The term is related to concepts such as eclecticism, revivalism, and relativism.” Historicism is NOT one style, it embraces all revivals, be they Classical or Baroque. Since all of Budapest is fairly modern in historical terms, all of the styles used as mentioned above (except Bauhaus) fall into the category of historicism. The parliament building is Neo Gothic in style.
Notice Vienna is 1 and 8