Buda

Buda rose on the western bank of the Danube, opposite Pest, around the fortified royal seat on Castle Hill. Béla IV walled the hill after the Mongol invasion; Louis the Great and then Sigismund built a Gothic palace there, and for much of his reign Sigismund made Buda the chief residence of the Hungarian kings. Under King Matthias Corvinus in the fifteenth century, the court attracted Italian artists and scholars; the royal library and Renaissance palace made the city a celebrated centre of learning and art.

Ottoman forces took Buda in 1541, and the city became the seat of an Ottoman governor. Mosques and baths joined the churches and streets of the old royal capital. In 1686 a Holy League army retook Buda after a long siege that devastated the medieval palace. Rebuilding under Habsburg rule changed the appearance of the castle and the town around it.