Heroes' Square

Hungary threw itself a thousand-year birthday party in 1896, and Heroes' Square was the centrepiece. The Millennium Monument at its heart took a full decade to build: a 36-metre column topped by the Archangel Gabriel holding the Holy Crown of St. Stephen in one hand and an apostolic cross in the other. Below him, seven bronze horsemen represent the Magyar chieftains who led their tribes into the Carpathian Basin in 895 and founded the nation. The symbolism is not subtle, and it was never meant to be.

Behind the column, two sweeping semicircular colonnades hold fourteen statues of Hungary's most important rulers and leaders, from King Stephen to Lajos Kossuth. The roster has changed over time — after World War I, five Habsburg rulers were removed and replaced with Hungarian independence heroes, a political edit carved in stone. The whole composition was inaugurated in 1906 and declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2002.

The square has witnessed some of the most charged moments in modern Hungarian history. On June 16, 1989, a crowd of 250,000 gathered here for the reburial of Imre Nagy, the prime minister executed after the 1956 revolution. It was one of the events that triggered the fall of communism in Hungary, and images of that day were broadcast worldwide. The square was also where massive communist rallies were held for decades before that — same space, opposite ideologies, the statues watching it all.

Flanking the square are the Museum of Fine Arts and the Hall of Art, both worth visiting. But the square itself, especially at dusk when the golden light catches the bronze figures, is the real masterpiece.