Pest () is the part of

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

, the capital city of

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

, that lies on the eastern bank of the

Danube The Danube ( ; see also #Names and etymology, other names) is the List of rivers of Europe#Longest rivers, second-longest river in Europe, after the Volga in Russia. It flows through Central and Southeastern Europe, from the Black Forest sou ...

. Pest was administratively unified with

Buda Buda (, ) is the part of Budapest, the capital city of Hungary, that lies on the western bank of the Danube. Historically, “Buda” referred only to the royal walled city on Castle Hill (), which was constructed by Béla IV between 1247 and ...

and Óbuda in 1873; prior to this, it was an independent city. In colloquial Hungarian, "Pest" is sometimes also used ''

pars pro toto ; ; ), is a figure of speech where the name of a ''portion'' of an object, place, or concept is used or taken to represent its entirety. It is distinct from a merism, which is a reference to a whole by an enumeration of parts; and metonymy, where ...

'' to refer to Budapest as a whole. Comprising about two-thirds of the city's area, Pest is flatter and much more heavily urbanized than Buda. Many of Budapest's most notable sites are in Pest, including the

Inner City The term inner city (also called the hood) has been used, especially in the United States, as a euphemism for majority-minority lower-income residential districts that often refer to rundown neighborhoods, in a downtown or city centre area. Soc ...

(), the

Parliament In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

(''Országház''), the

Opera Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...

, the Great Market Hall, Heroes' Square, and Andrássy Avenue.

Etymology

According to

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzant ...

the settlement was called ''Pession'' in antiquity ( Contra-Aquincum). Alternatively, the name ''Pest'' may have come from a Slavic word meaning "furnace", "oven" (Bulgarian ; Serbian /''peć''; Croatian ''peć''), related to the word (meaning "cave"), probably with reference to a local cave where fire burned. The spelling ''Pesth'' was occasionally used in English, even as late as the early 20th century, although it is now considered archaic.

History

Pest was originally founded as a

Celt The Celts ( , see Names of the Celts#Pronunciation, pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples ( ) were a collection of Indo-European languages, Indo-European peoples. "The Celts, an ancient Indo-European people, reached the apoge ...

ic settlement, then a fortified camp established by the Romans (Contra-Aquincum) across the river from their military border camp at Aquincum. Remains of the original Roman camp can still be seen at Március 15. tér. During the Middle Ages, Pest was an independent

city A city is a human settlement of a substantial size. The term "city" has different meanings around the world and in some places the settlement can be very small. Even where the term is limited to larger settlements, there is no universally agree ...

separate from Buda/Ofen, which became an important economic center during the 11th–13th centuries. The first written mention dates back to 1148. Pest was destroyed in the 1241 Mongol invasion of Hungary, but was rebuilt shortly thereafter. Demographically, in the 15th century Pest was mostly Hungarian, while Buda across the Danube had a German-majority population. In 1838 Pest was flooded by the

; parts of the city were under as much as eight feet of water, and the flood destroyed or seriously damaged three-fourths of the city's buildings. In 1849 the first suspension bridge, the Széchenyi Chain Bridge, was constructed across the Danube connecting Pest with

. Subsequently, in 1873, the two cities were unified with Óbuda to become

Notable people

* László Teleki (1811–1861), writer, statesman and magician * Henrik Weber (1818–1866), painter *

Theodor Herzl Theodor Herzl (2 May 1860 – 3 July 1904) was an Austria-Hungary, Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist and lawyer who was the father of Types of Zionism, modern political Zionism. Herzl formed the World Zionist Organization, Zionist Organizat ...

(1860–1904), founder of the political Zionist movement * Harry Houdini (1874–1926), illusionist and escape acts performer * Franz Rausch (1792-1877), piano maker

References

External links

{{Authority control Geography of Budapest

Etymology

History

Notable people

See also

References

Further reading

External links