Fantastic Budapest: 10 stunning stories from the past of the Hungarian capital – photos

There were pig slaughters on Margaret Island and there were organised bull-fights in the zoo. A PhD student collected some stunning stories colouring the past of the Hungarian capital, below you can read the 10 most interesting ones.

Brigitta Pályi is a PhD student at Pázmány Péter Catholic University’s Doctoral School of History where she is researching the History of the early 20th century Budapest. She regularly shares interesting stories on emlekezzbudapest.blog.hu from where szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu collected the top 10 ones.

1.

A ministerial declaration of 1903 prohibited standing on trams. As a result, only those passengers could travel on trams who had a seat.

2.

In Buda, instead of church bell ring, noon was signed by a cannon shot for long. In fact, the shot was done by the all-time caretaker of the Ferenc Toldy Secondary School.

3.

There was an organised, Spanish-style bull-fight in June 1904 for which even a circle-shaped arena was erected in the Budapest Zoo and Botanical Garden.

4.

At the beginning of the 20th century, there were Vienna sausage vendors everywhere on the streets of Budapest who offered their product with horseradish to the passerby, street cleaners, carters or even prostitutes.

5.

When the Comedy Theatre of Budapest (Vígszínház) opened its gates on 1 May 1896, no buildings were yet around it. Furthermore, its neighbourhood was infamous for robberies and even murders. However, though locals were wondering then why anybody would build a theatre in such a dangerous district, land prices started to rise after its inauguration and therefore, many invested in building flats around it which we can see today.