Pest

Pest lies on the flat left bank of the Danube, opposite the hill of Buda, on the site of the Roman fort of Contra-Aquincum and beside the crossing of the river. It is first written about in 1148, and the Mongols destroyed it in 1241 before it was rebuilt. In the Middle Ages it stood as a separate town from Buda; in the fifteenth century its people were mostly Hungarian, while Buda across the river was mainly German.

Under Matthias Corvinus, when Buda became the royal capital and its renaissance palace was famous across Europe, Pest grew into a considerable merchant town of its own. In 1541 both cities fell to the Ottomans, who made Buda their centre and left Pest as the commercial town on the plain. The Habsburgs retook them in 1686 after a bloody siege that left both utterly ruined. Pest recovered in the eighteenth century, spreading beyond its old walls. The royal university moved here from Buda in 1784, and fairs drew merchants from all over the country. In 1802 Count Ferenc Széchényi gave his collections to found the National Museum, whose building was begun in 1837, and Pest's reform-age Hungarian theatre opened the same year. By then Pest had overtaken Buda in size and wealth.