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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Budapest's Palace District | 4/5 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest's_Palace_District | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T16:01:32.329935+00:00 | kb-cron |
== Soviet occupation and Communism == Still bullet-marked buildings show that the Palace District, like the rest of Budapest, was left scarred by the fighting at the end of the Second World War. The damage was particularly bad around the Nagykörút and Kálvin tér. But while buildings on the former were reconstructed more or less to their original state, on Kálvin tér many of the fine 19th century buildings on both sides of the square were demolished. More damage in both parts of the Palace District was inflicted during the 1956 uprising and the subsequent Soviet attack. The communist regime neglected the district's buildings and committed some great acts of vandalism, especially the demolition in 1965 of the city's National Theatre, until 1908 the Népszínház (People's Theatre – or Volkstheater) on Blaha Lujza tér. This building, much loved by Budapesters, had been constructed in 1875 to the designs of Fellner & Helmer. The loss of the National Theatre still seems to leave a gap on Blaha Lujza tér. A street on the eastern side of the József körút which led to the Népszínház is still called Népszínház utca. In 1948 the regime also demolished the National Stables behind the Museum. In 1952, it used part of the area to construct a concrete bunker designed to enable the regime to continue broadcasting in case of emergency including nuclear attack. The interior ministry also used it for conducting wiretaps. In 1969 this was incorporated into a larger Hungarian Radio office block equally unsympathetic to its grand surroundings. As the post-war communist regime consolidated its grip, the names of a number of streets and institutions in the Palotanegyed were changed. In 1946 Főherceg Sándor utca (Archduke Alexander Street) was renamed Bródy Sándor utca.Sándor Bródy (writer) (1863-1924) was a Jewish-born novelist, dramatist, and short-story writer who was 'among the first in Hungarian literature to focus attention on the urban proletariat, and the first to introduce the coarse and pungent vernacular of the big city into literary works'. In the same year the metropolitan library in the former Wenckheim Palace was named the Szabó Ervin Library in honour of Ervin Szabó, a revolutionary socialist who translated the works of Marx and Engels into Hungarian and who in 1911 had been appointed the library's director. In 1949, Eszterházy utca and Ötpacsirta utca were renamed Puskin utca. Two years later, in 1948, the section of Baross utca in front of the library was renamed Szabó Ervin tér Surprisingly, the communist regime did not rename the József körút (Joseph ringroad), named after the Archduke of Austria and Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, as it did the Teréz and Erzsébet stretches of the ringroad, also named after Habsburg monarchs. In 1950, Horánszky utca, named after Dual Monarchy-era Hungarian member of parliament and trade minister Nándor Horánszky, was renamed Makarenko utca, in honour of Soviet educational theorist Anton Makarenko. In 1962, Rökk Szillárd utca, named after a wealthy 19th century philanthropist, was renamed Somogyi Béla after a leftist journalist murdered by White forces in 1920. Of the Palotanegyed's eleven or so cafés which existed during Budapest's pre-war heyday, all except one vanished. The one survival, the Múzeum, closed during the Covid period and as at February 2026 has not reopened, though there are reports it will.