Hidden Treasures of Budapest

I’m seeking out the hidden treasures Budapest all the time, and sometimes I come across a real find. For example, when I was making my docudrama, A Café in the Sky, my little production team and I went on a location scout in the Goszdu Udvar. The Goszdu is a series of interconnected, early 20^th century apartment buildings with a corridor running between them. It is like a miniature city in itself. When we shot there a few years ago, restoration work had not begun on the buildings. After securing permission to shoot there, we couldn’t wait to go and check the place out. It was a Saturday evening in October and we took flashlights with us. At one point we opened a door to an attic. There were fragments of an old children’s railway set, sepia photographs curling up at the corner and vintage ladies shoes lying among the rubble. A chill ran down my spine. It was like walking through someone’s memory.

The Goszdu has been restored now, but nevertheless, one feels the past is alive in Budapest, in a way that isn’t always the case in ‘western’ European cities. It’s one of the things that make this place so special. As you can see from some of the photos here, I like to snap pictures of old street signs and neon hoardings. If it were down to me, every single one of these would be preserved. If the past is truly a foreign country, count me in for permanent residence.

Another aspect of Budapest’s past that is hidden, or not so widely known, are the traces left behind of the Turkish occupation. Buda was the capital of Ottoman Hungary between 1541 and 1686. It’s been my observation that modern day Hungarians and Turks get along with a kind of special amicability reserved for former, bitter enemies. But at the time, the occupation was clearly resented. When the capital was liberated, just about every Turkish building was razed. Churches that had been used as mosques were converted back again, although a few mihrabs – the niches that face Mecca – remain. There’s one in the Inner City Parish church for example. Another, more obvious exception was the baths. The domed mosaic ceiling over the octagonal shaped pool at Rudas Baths dates from 1550. ‘We rather like the baths’, they must have decided, ‘the baths can stay’. Also in Buda, it’s an interesting climb up the medieval Gül Baba street, to come across the shrine to Baba. He was a Turkish dervish and holy man who died in Buda the same year the Turks occupied the city. Even to this day, his tomb is considered the northernmost place of pilgrimage for Muslims. He must have been well thought of by Hungarians too, as the tomb was spared destruction after the liberation of Buda in 1686. A few Ottoman headstones, like the ones pictured, remain in Tabán, in the 11th district. You can recognise them by their turbans and the wonderful calligraphy.

In any case, this is just to scratch the surface. Barely a week goes by that I don’t discover some interesting little back street, or specialty store, or Hungarian wine I had