News
04/11/2016. Exhibition The Bridges of Budapest
November 2, 2016:
The National Library of Karelia opened an exhibition The Bridges of Budapest. The exhibition was opened by the Consul General of Hungary in St. Petersburg Mr. Ferenc Nagy-Rébék and the Head of the National Library of Karelia Marina Nikishina. The opening ceremony was attended by the Consul for Economic and Commercial Affairs Adam Stifter.
The exhibition was prepared according to the Agreement on cooperation between the Archival Committee of St. Petersburg and the Archives of the city of Budapest. The exhibition had been already presented in St. Petersburg, Vyborg and Murmansk.
With help of the current exhibition the Archives of the city of Budapest introduces visitors to the rich history of road and pedestrian bridges of the Hungarian capital, history on their creation, restoration and exploitation. Most of the documents are old maps, projects, photographs from the Archives collection. Besides them there are materials from other Budapest public collections and modern photographs of bridges at the exhibition.
The history of the Budapest bridges is closely linked to the history of the city and the country. Construction of the first permanent bridge – Chain Bridge – was an important milestone in the epoch of bourgeois reforms of the 19th century. Since 1849, when the Széchenyi Chain Bridge crossing the Danube River was built, and until now 9 permanent road bridges and 2 railway bridges have been built. Today these bridges are the key elements of the transport infrastructure of Budapest. The traffic between the two halves of the two-million city and also extremely intensive domestic traffic and international transit traffic moves along the bridges. The bridges are not only transport constructions but also the main elements of the architectural heritage of Budapest; they have a symbolic meaning and play a crucial role in shaping the urban ensemble.
