Day of Budapest – 17th of November

In 1873, on this day, the General Assembly of the unified Budapest Székesfőváros held its founding session. In his memory, the capital's birthday is celebrated on 17th of November.

On this day the new capital of Hungary was created by the merger of Buda and Óbuda, located on the right bank of the Danube, and Pest, located on the left bank.

At the time of the unification, it was not clear what the name of the new capital should be - several name ideas came up, Hunvár, Etelvár, Dunagyöngye, Honderű and Bájkert were among the proposals, but in the end they decided on the simpler solution, and the former Pest-Buda by inverting and connecting the names of the two settlements without a hyphen, the name Budapest was born.

In the heart of the city was established the world's first public park, Városliget, which anyone could freely enter, unlike the manor and castle parks owned by the nobles. In the place of the 81-hectare grove, there used to be a marshy wasteland called Ökrösdűló, which in the 1750s, due to the threat of malaria, the city administration tried to eradicate it by planting willow trees. The attempt was unsuccessful, as cattle walking through the nearby pastures ate up the saplings. According to Mária Terézia's forest law they ended up filling the area and the development of the grove began at the end of the 1790s.

It is not by chance that Budapest is called the city of spas: among the major cities of Europe and even the world, it is home to the most spas (118 in number) and the most spas, thanks to which our capital has also been the permanent seat of the International Spa Association since 1937. The spa culture of the city is due to the Turkish subjugation for a century and a half and the bathing mania of Islam.

Budapest is the 9th most populous city in the European Union. There are several UNESCO World Heritage sites in Budapest, including the view of the Danube bank, the Buda Castle Quarter, Andrássy út, Hősök tere and the Millennium Underground Railway, the world's first electric-powered underground railway and Europe's second underground railway after London.