Tombstones emerged at the base of Petőfi Bridge in Budapest

Due to the extremely low water level of the Danube, many interesting things have been found; valuable historical artefacts, German frag grenade, wrecks of sunken ships to name a few, but the most bizarre are the tombstones at the Buda side of Petőfi bridge, to which Tamás György Kovács drew the attention of Index.

The history behind these 100-year-old objects is relatively well-known.

The stones were probably deposited there in the 1960s when the government ordered the deposit of rocks into the bank of the Danube in order to prevent the erosion of the riverside. The tombstones themselves were probably collected and ’reused’ for this purpose because around that time, the government liquidated the Németvölgyi graveyard, which has been closed for many decades since 1912. Today, the Budapest Congress Center and the MOM Cultural Center are standing where the graveyard used to be.

The origins of the tombstones were unravelled in detail by the Dunai Szigetek Blog (Blog for the Islands of the Danube) in 2013, but

they were not as easily observed then, as they are now.

Now even the names and the date of their death – which in most cases happened in the turn of the 20th century – is clearly visible.

For example, Demski Nándor, deceased in 1884, Elemy Károlyné, a former teacher of the elementary school at Érsek street, deceased in 1907, and Devics András, whose tombstone is built into the riverside structure.

Photo: MTI (illustration)

Source: index.hu