A castle hill street in Buda

Hungarian troops stormed the fortress from the Austrians

On Hunyadi János út, on Castle Hill, you're close to where the Siege of Buda once raged. In May 1849, Hungarian revolutionary troops surrounded the fortress of Buda, held by Austrian soldiers. The castle sat on a high ridge above the Danube, and taking it back meant fighting street by street. After days of bombardment, the Hungarians stormed the walls and seized the hill. The general leading the Austrian garrison, Heinrich Hentzi von Arthurm, died defending it. The battle flattened parts of the old town and shook the royal palace that had stood there since medieval times.

The royal palace and its walls had already seen centuries of war. Buda itself, the old town on this hill, existed as a separate city from the year 1000 until it merged with Pest in 1873 to form Budapest. Long before 1849, the Ottoman army had held the fortress for nearly 150 years, until a Christian coalition broke through the walls in 1686 and drove them out, ending Turkish rule over central Hungary.

At Soldier's Statue, a bronze soldier has stood watch since 1893.

Cannon fire leveled the medieval castle in 1686

The Ottomans had held Buda's fortress since 1541, nearly a century and a half of occupation. Inside the castle, the Renaissance palace built by Hungarian kings sat in military hands, used as a garrison and left to decay. Cannon fire struck Stephen's Tower, where the defenders had stored their gunpowder, and the tower exploded. Much of the medieval palace complex came down with it. What the Ottomans had neglected for 145 years, the siege finished off in a matter of weeks.

Plague struck Buda twice after the siege ended

Peace did not come easy after the siege. Soldiers returning from campaigns in the Balkans carried plague back into Buda, and it tore through the town starting in 1691, killing residents for years afterward. The town raised a Holy Trinity Column in 1706 near Matthias Church to mark the dead. It barely stood before a second outbreak hit in 1709, worse than the first. The 1706 column was pulled down and replaced with a bigger one.

The street took the name of a medieval general

Hunyadi János út itself carries the name of János Hunyadi, the 15th-century Hungarian military leader who defended the kingdom against Ottoman invasion long before the siege of 1686. By the late 1800s, Buda Castle had become a place of memory as much as power. In 1893, the bronze Soldier's Statue went up 360 feet from here, honoring the soldiers who fought for this hill.

The quarter was rebuilt from wartime ruins

The castle took heavy damage again in the Second World War, and much of what stands on Castle Hill today was rebuilt from the ruins. Hunyadi János út sits inside this restored quarter, a quiet residential street built into the shell of a district that burned, exploded, and plagued its own people more than once. The Buda Castle Quarter is now part of Budapest, the city formed in 1873 when Buda merged with Pest and Óbuda across the river. Visitors walk these cobbled streets past the same ground where Austrian and Hungarian soldiers once fought house to house. The House of Houdini, a small museum on nearby Dísz Square, sits about 440 feet from here, marking the childhood neighborhood of the illusionist Harry Houdini.