Visegrád

A couple weeks ago I took a day trip to Visegrád, a town near Budapest. It's easy to get to and I enjoyed it very much; I'd readily recommend it to anyone visiting Budapest for a few days. The town is located on the Danube, north of Budapest and past Szentendre--on the "Danube bend." Hundreds of years ago Visegrád was the capitol of Hungary, but now it's a tiny little town, with the ruins of a royal palace, and up above on the mountain that towers over the town, an old castle. You can hike up to the castle (25 minutes, maybe), and that's where the photo above is from, looking westwards on the Danube. Visegrád's history also links up Hungary, the Czechs and Slovaks, and Poland, and because of that there was a summit between those four republics here after the end of Communism.

Here you can see the palace, partly reconstructed. The most famous king to live here was Matthias Corvinus (Mátyás), who also gives his name to the beautiful Matthias Church in Budapest and is in my wallet every day on the 1000 forint bill. He is famous for being in touch with the Italian Renaissance, and indeed this palace featured fountains and carvings and altarpieces that were either imported from Italy or made by Italian craftsmen. I rather like the way he links the national and the cosmopolitan, and wouldn't mind learning more about him.

I love these carvings of lions and lion cubs from an old fountain...

The kitchen, recreated... to quote one of the signs, "Matthias spent a lot for the kitchen; he was a great lover of culinary pleasures. The historian Bonfini recorded that he went to the kitchen and controlled personally the cooks if he had a special guest, and in some cases he even helped there."