Our Group is now visiting baths at Hotel Gellért, inaugurated in 1918. The hotel itself looks a little bit old-fashioned, but baths are very nice and clean.
The building has a very eclectic style, mixing oriental, art-deco, art nouveau...
"Heroes' Square", with statues of Kings, in the colonnade and Tribal chiefs ("Attila- style")riding horses in the middle...
...and in a much softer style, an allegorical statue above the colonnade !
State Opera House.
The Imperial Box.
Budapest Opera has one of the best acoustic in the world (second after Scala in Milano).
Museum of Applied Arts, opened in 1896. Style can be described as "Fantasy Hungarian with strong eastern influence".
Here is the famous "Opteon" (?) (from a Greek word), which means an "Oculus" in the roof providing natural light on several floors !!! For our local guide it was a common French word. This fantastic guide, "Yuri", spoke better and (unusual) French than any of us.
Stained glass-window from the oculus of the opteon ( ! )
Ceiling somewhere in the museum.
"Glass - ceiling", Eiffel style.
au-dessus: partie d'un entourage de fenêtre, de l'atelier parisien de Monsieur BIGOT. Cet artiste était spécialiste des décorations d'immeubles fabriquées avec un émail particulièrement résistant.
Ci-dessous: "Tapisserie aux cinq cygnes".
Just two nice pieces from the "art-nouveau" exhibition in the museum :
above, part of a window-frame, from Mr BIGOT's atelier in Paris. This artist was specialized in very resistant glaze for building decorations.
under: "Five swan tapestry"
Outside Budapest, we visit Empress SISSI's castle, recently renovated. It looks as if it had been built yesterday. It smells new paint and new fabrics. Beautiful. When, at least, the Russian left, they stole absolutely everything in the castle, even the electric wires !
The Russian had erected lot of communist style statues all over the country during their occupation. What to do with them? Instead of destroying them, the government decided to put 42 of them in an open air museum called "Memento Park". The boots here are the only thing left after a huge Lenin statue in Budapest.
Famous "Trabant" car, a dream for so many persons at that time.
Still outside Budapest, here is the Basilica of Esztergom (1856), largest in Europe after Rome. The Treasury contains Hungary's richest store of religious objects (some of them very old, 9th and 15th century).
Not far from there, the river Danube comes close to Slovaquia (beyond the mountains).
Back to Budapest, we come to the former Jewish Ghetto. In this nice building there was a toy shop, long time ago.
"Nagy Synagogue" (1854-1859), second largest in the world (after New York).
In the small garden beyond the Synagogue, there is the "Memorial Tree", made with thousands of metal leaves. On each leaf there is engraved the name of a Jewish person or family who were killed by the nazis. From 600 000 jewish people in Hungary, only 60 000 survided, mostly in the City of Budapest. Some leaves are still waiting for names...
But Budapest is also a charmful City, with delicious food, nice bars, restaurants and orchestras. Life goes on... People seem happy.
Bye Bye Budapest !