BUDAPEST'S PARLIAMENT

                                A Spectacular Building

            On two previous visits to Budapest I had only seen the Parliament building from the outside, and from the water it is spectacular. As the largest, most beautiful, and best-known building in Budapest, it is one of the symbols of the city and on this visit my number one priority was to tour the inside of the building.

            We left early in the morning to ride the subway to the proper station, which was easy. We had been told that various tours were held in various languages. It was a bit of a challenge to find the right entrance to buy tickets, and when we finally did we had missed the English tour by a few minutes. We bought tickets for the next one, an hour and a half later.  There is not a lot to do in the immediate area of the Parliament building. The river was high and the steps leading from street down to the river were under water more than half way up and blocked off.  We walked along the Danube River and walked across the famous Chain Bridge. My traveling buddy on this trip was not much of a walker and I exhausted her walking across the bridge where on the other side she didn’t want to walk any farther. So we backtracked and found a café to sit and enjoy a cup of café while we waited for our tour.

          The Parliament House is a neo-gothic structure with a renaissance dome. It is one of the largest state buildings in Europe.1945 was the only time before 1990 that an elective legislature convened in its great hall.

Resembling Westminster, it was built 1885-1902. Its 691 rooms occupy 17,700 square meters.  Measuring 871 feet long and 383 feet wide, it is one of the largest parliaments in the world. The dome is 312 feet high. The building can be seen from most anywhere on the riverfront

Fifty 5-story apartment blocks could fit inside this huge building. There are 27 entrance gates. We walked up the 96 step grand entrance hall over the red carpet. This hall is magnificent.  There are 90 statues and coat of arms of Hungarian cities, and 152 statues and pictures of national fauna throughout the building. There also are 40 kilos of 22-23 karat gold used in the building.

The central dome hall has stain glass windows. The inner dome is 27 meters high while the outside dome is 96 meters high. I wished I could lay down on the floor to better view the ceiling frescos. From the central dome there are two identical wings. The red star on top of the dome was removed in 1990. Walking down one hall the guide stopped to point out the brass cigar holders that line the window sills outside the debate room. One would place his cigar in a numbered slot and it would continue to burn for as long as the gentleman was in session. I tried to photograph this unique piece of memorabilia but had little success.

The inside of Budapest’s parliament is spectacular! The Hungarian Holy Crown and coronation insignia are kept here under the central dome. We arrived just as the guards were changing.

You know nearly every venue exits through the inevitable gift shop. There was so much to see on this tour, I simply couldn’t write fast enough as the docent explained one thing after another, so I was desperately looking forward to buying a book in the gift shop. But it was not to be, because believe it or not, Parliament did not have a gift shop!  For the rest of my stay in Budapest I checked every bookstore I could find but could not find any kind of a book that explained the history and the building’s contents or features.

The tour was well worth our time. If I ever get back to Budapest I’ll repeat it again to obtain more information. It is truly a gorgeous building.