Thursday 14 April 2016

Student exchange in Hungary - Day 4

An early start today: at 07:30 am we leave for Budapest! Our first stop in it's the Castle Discrict, an ancient market place where public events were held. St. Mathias's church is named after an ancient king and the church was a crowning place for six centuries.
From the Fishermen's Bastion you can see the whole town and the view on the actual Parliament is really amazing:
In the middle of the Danube stands Marguerite island, now a public park with a sport centre and swimming pool for national competition.
In front of the current presidential residence there is the old royal palace, now hosting the National Gallery as well as the National library.
For the visit to the National Library we had an hungarian guide alongside - lucky fo us, a teacher was here to translate! The building is based on an old one constructed in the XIV century but the actual Library was builded at the end if the XVIII century. During WW II the building was severely damaged by aviation bombs. In the 1950's the Hungarian government decided to use the building as a museum and as the home to the National Library.
The Library itself was founded to collect documents on hungarian people's history on 1802 and on display we've been able to see some of the original books collecetd in the 1800's. The library holds some 9 million books and journals/newspaper as well; there are also maps, poster, music spreads and so on. On the 6th floor there are special collections, as theatre texts, music spreads (like Handel's works), manuscripts (including the oldest text written in hungarian). We've also been shown how the library works today and some Shakespeare's memorabilia - there's a tale about an hungarian refugee that learnt english from Shakespeare's works and was welcomed in England.
After the visit we crossed the Chains Brige and went to the eastern part of town, Pest, for a visit to the Basilica, lunch and free time! This beautiful day ended on Heroes' Square where we took group photos... then back to Szazhalombatta!
Written by the Italian team.

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