Austria Slovenia and places to visit

There is much more to Austria than snow and winter sports.

Tivoli Park, the setting for that indispensable series of nineteenth-century Austrian buildings: Opera, museum and art gallery, all still dressed in varying shades of peeling 'Kaiser' yellow.

The Opera is, surprisingly, not the work of Helmer and Fellner but of two Czech architects who preferred Neo-Rococo to Baroque revival and were tunefully called Hrasby and Hruby. The interior is the usual display of red and gold, though considerably less lavish than the nearby theatres in Rijeka or Zagreb. As always in Central Europe, standards of performance vary, but the Slovenes have a natural talent for singing and when properly drilled the chorus can match that of any comparable house in the country.

The art gallery nearby is well worth a visit. None of the painters' names will be familiar, but there is evidence in these canvases of both inspiration and technique. The usual 'empire' portraits of the local gentry are followed by several rooms of late nineteenth-century portraits which would be welcome in the collections of any London gallery.

The third member of this cultural triumvirate is the Ethnographical Museum. As Slovenia has become developed, the costumes on display here are never to be seen outside these rooms or at some folkloristic gala performance. Aprons are no longer worn in the hills, as they are in the villages of Slovakia or Transylvania, and the car has completely replaced the horse and cart.

It is one of the delights of Ljubljana that, within a few minutes' walk of here, along Latterman's Allee, the town can be quickly forgotten among the chestnut-lined paths of the woods. A series of Plecnik lanterns leads the way past an old villa, once the property of Marshal Radetsky, up to a hill crowned by a single-towered church. Near this an old cottage houses a museum dedicated to Ivan Cankar, a nineteenth-century Slovene writer inspired by its views over the hills. Below this, the path runs down to a small Bosnian restaurant whose charcoal grill can be smelt for miles and where the local wine and Balkan cuisine leave an impression of a culture which is no longer wholly Central European.

Between Ljubljana and Trieste, the railway runs across embankments over the Ljubljana plain, whose muddiness made the construction of this part of the line almost as difficult as that involved in bridging the Semmering Pass. On a clear day the line offers a spectacular retrospective view of the city and the Julian Alps beyond.

The Piranesian remains of an impressive viaduct blown up during the war can be seen on the right as the train ascends past Kamnik. Postoyna is renowned for its caves, of which the celebrated Adelsberg grotto, recorded in the Middle Ages but rediscovered only in 1818, is the most spectacular. In some, balls took place regularly each Whit Monday until the First World War. The spectacular illuminations of these occasions cannot be imagined, although the guide will point out a number of contemporary prints which attempt to recapture these festivities.

Postoyna

At Postoyna, a new bleak landscape appears as the railway penetrates the limestone plateau, or 'karst'.This treeless landscape was perhaps best described by Schinkel, the nineteenth-century German architect, when he wrote of it on his first journey to Italy as a place which seemed to have suffered 'the most horrible revolutions of this earth'.

Pola and Istria

Further east, the single-track line to Pola and Istria takes the train through uninhabitable country still mercilessly swept by the fierce north-east bora wind. Here, even at the edge of its inhospitable mass, there is still something arid and forbidding about the gashes of white rock which can now be seen.

The surface is intersected by gorges and partly covered with underwood and loose stones. Numerous funnel-shaped cavities known as 'Dolines', slight depressions in the landscape, can be observed flashing past as the train gathers speed. On a clear day, the view to the east across this uneven terrain can stretch right across the heart of Istria, while to the west on the day after the end of a bora, a bright blue will be seen stretching from the distance into infinity as sky and, as later becomes apparent, sea meet on the azure horizon.

From Villa Opicina there follows the most picturesque fifteen minutes of railway travel in Central Europe, as the train cuts through the lime-stone rock and begins to descend in a sweeping curve along the coast. To the west the gaunt silhouette of the castle of Duino rises in front of the oil refinery and shipyards of Monfalcone. Fortunately for Rainer Maria Rilke, the Austrian poet who enjoyed Princess Thurn und Taxis' hospitality here before the First World War, in the months during which he wrote his Duino Elegies these modern eyesores had barely been con¬templated.


Every year in October, scholars from all over Europe descend on Duino to hear a series of lectures on the poet, followed by a ricevimento for their benefit. As well as professors and writers, there is a sprinkling of that old aristocracy of Central Europe who, looking over the balcony at the blue Adriatic guarded by jagged rocks, seem more than capable of reciting from memory the verses of the first elegy: 'Wer wenn ich schrie, harte mich denn aus den Engel Ordnungen'. They may have nodded off during the more complex perorations of some learned professor from Barcelona, but they still know their stuff.

As the train continues to descend, a sudden gap in the rocks reveals the sea deep below, giving the impression that there is nothing but a sheer drop between the track and the ocean. In fact, there is an almost equally spectacular road beneath, constructed by the 'Duce', cutting through the rock with almost as fine views. The train rattles down past the wooden pavilion of the former Habsburg station at Miramar, as the castle floats past below.

Trieste information

The central station at Trieste does justice to this journey - elegant Grecian columns, high arches and booking hall all preserve the spirit of nineteenth-century Habsburg pride. From here a road leads to the right of the wooded square towards the sea and the riva. The ten-minute walk to the city centre shows immediately how prosperous the port was before the last war. Palace after palace rise to the left, proclaiming banks or insurance companies whose headquarters were once here. Across the bay, towards a Mussolini-style lighthouse, stretch the half-abandoned warehouses of the port.

With Trieste's secession to Italy after the First World War, the port which had been the unique commercial lifeline of an empire of twenty nations became just one of many Italian ports, and the slow decline began which has made Trieste, sitting on a bay which is all but empty of ships, something of a ghost city. At night the riva, with the curtain shutters of its palazzi blowing in the wind, is deserted and only the buildings along it testify to the cosmopolitan life which once flowed through its streets.

A small canal to the left terminates rather dramatically in the church of Sant' Antonio, a Neo-Classical building brilliantly situated by its archi¬tect Peter von Nobile, who designed the Burgtor in Vienna.

Along one side of the canal, facing the sea, is a rather jazzy twenties building which once housed the British consulate. Along the other side runs the long Palazzo Carciotti, the headquarters of the captain of the port, pulling an effete classical face with dome and portico towards the sea. Next to it is the even more chaste Greek Orthodox church, whose silver iconed interior reveals clearly how much wealth the Greek community of the city amassed in the nineteenth century. For those with brains and energy who came to the 'free port', fabulous fortunes were to be made, and the Greeks were not alone in acquiring them.

The large bank next to the church was once the Hotel et de la Ville,
where Mahler stayed when he conducted at the opera house. Its con¬version, however sympathetic, into a commercial institution sounded Trieste's death-knell as a city on the circuit of distinguished European travellers, and what luxury hotels remain cannot begin to recapture its style.

Where to go in Trieste

Further along the riva is the Cafe Tommaseo, one of the most civilized cafes in Europe, where it is still possible to hear a waiter disputing points of Virgil with some eighty-year-old barone assisted by a leading critic of the Corriere delta Sera. The asymmetry of the interior means that the mirrors between the potted plants reflect the light in an almost theatrical way, and there are times when the rooms with their crumbling ceiling and caryatids seem to constitute a stage rather than a mere cafe.

Fortunately, because a number of heroic irredentists plotted against the Austrians here, there seems to be no danger that this magnificent institution will be harmed.
A biscuit's throwaway from Tommaseo's rises the orange and red Neo-Classical Teatro Verdi, a splendid copy of La Scala in Milan and one of the few theatres in Italy to have retained its interior intact, never having suffered from fire.

Performances here at their best rival those of any opera house in Italy, with the added advantage that the theatre is far more intimate and colourful than most. The audience are still shown to their seats by bicorned footmen in eighteenth-century dress and on gala nights, when Piero Capucilli or some other native of Trieste is singing, the stage is strewn with roses thrown with abandon from the countless logge. In few parts of Central Europe do they take Verdi as seriously.

Behind the Opera is the nineteenth-century arcade - alas damaged by fire in the twenties - known as the 'Tergesteo', containing a comfortable cafe once decorated with excellent nineteenth-century paintings but now rather empty after a prim restoration. From here it is only a few steps to the Piazza Unita, bounded on one side by the sea and on the other three by imposing nineteenth-century palaces of the amministrazione.

The Lloyd palace, with its rather nervous pilasters, is a work of the Austrian Ringstrasse architect Ferstel, who seems in this design to have mellowed his usual heaviness to exploit the more southern light.

In the building next to it, past the Hotel Duchi d' Aosta, is the former hotel in which Winckelmann was murdered. Austrian police records note that the great eighteenth-century scholar and founder of art history was stabbed to death by a man of low repute - a squalid end to someone dedicated to the canons of classical beauty.

An arch through the rather heavy Town Hall leads right to a maze of ruined Venetian streets, revealing that, for all its stuffy Austrian clothes, the heart of the town is undeniably Italian. Even during the empire, this was one of the least prosperous parts of the city, a picturesque setting for the hero of some Italo Svevo novel but not for any of the fashionable bourgeois merchants.

The shuttered windows are strewn with laundry and an army of cats spring from evil-smelling drains. Most of the houses are still lived in, although on the oldest of them faded advertisements for Dubonnet or 'chambres fibres' evoke a previous existence of more energy. This picturesque squalor would have been familiar to James Joyce, who lived in Trieste for many years before the First World War.

As the road ascends, a Roman arch named rather bizarrely after Richard the Lionheart, who legend says was shipwrecked here after the Crusades, appears propping up a restaurant which is open past midnight. Where once countless sailors caroused, there are now only a few pensioners enjoying their prosciutto and Merlot before winding their way home.

From here the road continues to rise until a garden offers a retrospective view of the harbour and the hills towards Venice. At the bottom of the gardens, laid out in true municipal style in the sixties, is the forlorn ruin of the English church, which for the last five years has been woefully neglected by the Triestine authorities, so that now, with half its roof covered in creeper and part of its interior exposed to the elements, it has become a grotesque ruin - a sight predictable in Marienbad but curiously disturbing in a city normally so diligent in the preservation of its architectural heritage.

Nitra and Trnava Slovakia information

The road to Nitra and Trnava, both cities with important pasts, descends towards the beginning of the Central European plain. At Nitra the hills are already clad in vines, but the only buildings of interest here are a Baroque cathedral and a small Romanesque church in the grim suburb ofParovce. As this is never open and the hotels in Nitra are not of the best, it will be more convenient to press on to Trnava, once named the Slovak Rome and, until the establishment of the Hungarian See at Eztergom, the most important religious centre in the country.

There is little of this past glory left and many of the churches are filled with Orthodox clutter and locked or boarded up. The cathedral, a fourteenth-century building, was given a Baroque interior and two ludicrous towers in the eighteenth century.

Nearby, however, is an altogether more impressive church built by the Jesuits in 1628 to the designs of the Italian Pietro Spazzo. Austere yet hot with the fire of the Counter-Reformation, it is a generation earlier than similar buildings lying a few miles south-west, which because of the Turkish incursions could only be built fifty years later.

As well as the many Renaissance houses of note here, there are a charming Biedermeier theatre and a sixteenth-century Archbishop's Palace to be found within five minutes' walk of the Jesuit church. This can all be taken in at a glance and may have to be if the remaining few miles down onto the plain are to be covered in time to reach the Danube and the capital of Slovakia, Bratislava, before sunset.

The pointed towers of its castle are visible for miles around, reminding one that the kings of Hungary were once crowned here and that on more than one occasion it was here rather than Budapest or Vienna that the Habsburgs rallied their forces.

Situated on the last spurs of the Carpathians, the town has suffered considerably from the insensitive planning of post-war years, but its streets and squares have retained much charm and interest.

The castle is a brief ascent from the Danube promenade called the Jesininovo Nabi'. Its four corner towers date from between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries and it is perhaps poignant to recall that in the rooms of the south-east tower, the Hungarian crown jewels admired in Budapest were stored for decades.

A tour of the interior is possible most days of the week. Several of the rooms have been excellently restored to give a convincing impression of what life in the eighteenth century must have been like for the town's garrison commander.

Somewhere among the uniforms, pictures and Empire furniture, a small room may be pointed out as the birthplace of St Elizabeth of Thuringen. Through the pointed windows of the towers can be Seen on a clear day Vienna to the west and in the sharp light of winter the great Benedictine abbey of Pannonhalma in Hungary to the east.

The church of St Martin at Staromestska

From the castle, a path winds down to the Staromestska (good wines at the Rybne nam.) and the cathedral church of St Martin. Begun in 1204 and completed in 1445, it was restored both in the nineteenth century and in the years immediately after the last war. The coronation church of the Habsburgs in Hungary until 1848, it has a tower which is still surmounted by a pyramid bearing a gilded crown. Inside, the church, for all its wealth, lacks the mystery of Levoca or Kosice. Perhaps it was built too near Vienna and the more airy interior of the cathedral there. Only the chapel of St Anna in the north aisle captures the spirit of the fourteenth century.

Another chapel dedicated to St Eleemosinarius was built and decorated by Raphael Donner, who was also responsible for the rather heavy equestrian statue of St Martin of 1734, dressed most curiously in Magyar costume, outside the choir.

The Nalepkova leads east from here past various shops and nineteenth¬century houses to the theatre, early Helmer and Fellner with a seductively curved frontispiece. In front of it is a bust of the composer Hummel, who was born here in 1778. Further south the land slopes down towards the broad expanse of the Danube, where there are several other institutional buildings dating from Kaiserlich and Koniglich days, including the university and the Slovak National Gallery, which has some pleasant nineteenth-century paintings.

The Mostova Gorkeho

Nearby, the Mostova Gorkeho, a narrow street which was once the 'coronation hill' where the Habsburgs ascended after being crowned in the cathedral, runs to the river. Of all the monarchs who raised the sword of St Stephen to the four quarters of heaven, none did so amid wilder enthusiasm than Maria Theresa, who in 1741 ascended here with her child to call upon the Hungarians to save her empire, attacked by Prussia eager for Silesian territory.

History recounts few more stirring scenes than this appeal to Magyar chivalry, which in turn was met with the famous cry: 'Vitam et sanguinem pro rege nostro Maria Theresa!', as a hundred noblemen drew their sabres to pledge their allegiance to the woman who was their king.

As the Bulgarian tugs steam slowly up towards Austria and some Czech conscripts stare bemusedly at a machine recording the Danube's level, the memory of such heroism is perhaps irrelevant, but something of old Pressburg, as Maria Theresa and the Austrians called the city, remains further north of the theatre in the narrow Radnicna.

Here, next to each other in uneasy intimacy, are the former Town Hall and the Archbishop's Palace. The first is a Gothic building dressed in Renaissance clothes with a Baroque tower. Inside, good stucco and wooden ceilings make up a small town museum amid the sleepy buzz of the town's administrative offices.

Nearby is the altogether more imposing Archbishop's Palace, erected in the 1770s. In its dazzling hall of mirrors, the Peace of Pressburg was signed between Napoleon and the Austrian emperor Francis I after the battle of Austerlitz in 1805.

The Gothic Franciscan church

From here the road continues past several picturesque gables to the Gothic Franciscan church dating from the thirteenth century, with a chapel dedicated to St John which recalls the great Gothic interiors of Prague in its beauty and may have been the work of Peter Parler.

The Michalska, a pedestrian promenade beyond, culminates in the last remains of the medieval fortifications, the Michael Gate. The street is full of gift shops, second-hand bookshops and cafes all inserted into a series of facades which have changed little over the last hundred years. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the narrow roads above it, where a flyover has been constructed at the second-floor level of some narrow Rococo houses, one of which, a pink clock museum, cannot be taken seriously after such abuse.

From the Michael gate the Bastova leads to the left, where stands another Gothic church, dedicated to St Clarissa, usually locked. The narrow streets which wind back from here to the Nalepkova are sufficient distraction for more than one day, and the Carlton Hotel on the other side of that square, known as Hviezdoslavovo mimestie 7, is as good a place to rest as any before the train, bus or boat return to the west.

With its Germans, Hungarians and Slovaks, Bratislava continues to show that, even perched on the sharp edge of the iron curtain, something of the old Habsburg mixture of blood has survived to live peacefully on into the next century.

Car hire in Bratislava can be pre-booked before you travel, and cheap car hire from Bratislava Airport can save you time and money, and allow you to travel around this fascinating region at your own leisure.

Moravia and Olomouc

The journey back to Brno and thence to the last city of Moravia, Olomouc, is an hour and a half by bus or car which threading these sleepy hills encounters a rather grander landscape further north.

The city has a garrison aspect even today, when Russian soldiers fill the barracks and fortifications built for a corps of the Austrian army. Though taken by the Swedes during the Thirty Years War, it successfully withstood a siege by Frederick the Great in 1758. At the centre of the great eastern road to Krakow and Galicia, it is, as one might expect for a garrison town, always rather crowded.

As well as soldiers and traders, it is full of students from the university (founded 1573), which, although moved to Brno in the eighteenth century, was refounded after the war. As well as sieges, Olomouc has known several other events of historical significance for Central Europe. It was here during the tumultuous events of 1848 that the Austrian Kaiser, Franz Josef, was crowned.


Although its older quarters boast several Baroque fountains and a number of interesting churches, it is difficult to describe Olomouc as beautiful. The Town Hall in the main square is a wedding-cake structure, all minarets and gables, relieved by a rather more serious fourteenth¬century Gothic portal and a chapel oriel of 1491.

The cathedral, dating from 1107, was enthusiastically re-Gothicized in the 1880s, although the remains of a fourteenth-century vaulted cloister are to be seen to its north.

The square in front of the cathedral extends on its east side past the fine facade of the former Palais Liechtenstein, an early work of the 1660s by Lucchese and only just Baroque. Near here rises the Jesuit church of 1712, slim and severe, while to the south-west is the Dominican chapel of St Alexis, dating from 1380, with a dark cloister vaulted in 1483.

The fifteenth-century Franciscan church is also worth trying to enter, if only to see the rather demented nineteenth-century woodwork which fills every corner. In the picturesque roads which wind from here to the Town Hall, between the murky clothes shops and occasional tobacconists stuffed with Havana cigars are a couple of cafes and wine bars.

Not far from the Town Hall rises the battlemented thirteenth-century south tower of the church of St Mofic. Its north tower is fifteenth-century and its nave, despite the dramatic skyline, plain and high. The east end, however, is more inspiring, with a Renaissance front from which flow a series of free-standing steps dating from 1564.

The upper market square

Perhaps the most curious structure in the city is that to be found in the upper market square, for of all the Baroque columns and monuments to be seen in Olomouc the early eighteenth-century Trinity Column here is the most eccentric and brilliant.

It was erected 'to the honour of the divine trinity' ('deo triune veroque'). Eight rows of steps, containing eight steps each, lead up to eight doors, opening into a small eight-sided chapel. This is surrounded by a grating to which cling stone angels holding lanterns.

Above, a sort of obelisk rises to the height of 114 feet adorned by groups of stone figures of bishops, saints and angels, perhaps best described as possessing 'oriental quaintness'. At least one nineteenth-century traveller to this square has questioned how anyone could think it suitable for the 'noble simplicity of Christianity'.

Moravian culture

Such questions were not, however, the only concern of nineteenth-century writers. Far more seem to have been moved by another feature of Moravia, the extraordinary beauty of the Moravian girls. Hardly any travel book written during the last century failed to mention this, and while perhaps the traditional Moravian beauty is still to be found in her village, dressed in ethnic clothes inherited from her grandmother, it is surprising that the ravages of the twentieth century in Central Europe have allowed this attractive sight to flourish in the city as well. But if the German stock of this city has declined, the frontiers to the east have remained open and there is certainly Polish and Slovak blood flowing in their veins.

East of Olomouc, road and railway run to Zilina, a bleak industrial
landscape but the gateway to the Tatras and Slovakia. Although Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, lies on the Central European plain, Slovakia itself is a mountainous country and the Slovaks are a hardy race of hillsmen, never quite at home in a city suit.

They are, as Mrs Phillimore pointed out in her book In the Carpathians, one of the most lovable races of Europe - kind and hospitable, with a zest for enjoyment which makes the Czech seem an anaemic depressive in comparison. In the country, society is still clannish and rather patriarchal. Village weddings last for days and gallons of alcohol are consumed in a feast of singing and dancing.

Slovakia culture

Slovakia is also a land of colour, where houses and dress are brightly tinted so that villages bathed in the light of a Carpathian sunset seem to almost glow with purples, reds and golds. As might be expected in such a country, the sort of fabulous architectural treasures to be found in Bohemia and Moravia are not so common, and although today the Slovaks are in every way the Czechs' 'equals', their cultural development was retarded for centuries by their environment and also the insane Magyarization policies that their Hungarian masters pursued here during the days of the Habsburg empire.

For if Vienna, which ruled Bohemia, allowed the Czechs free use of their language, the Magyars, who were the self-appointed master race of Eastern Europe, permitted no such privileges, and Slovaks were relentlessly forced to learn the impossible and Util the last fifty years one could speak of a peasant race with some Justification.

Poprad

From Zilina, a railway follows some picturesque scenery to Poprad which is situated at the foot of the high Tatras. The hundred-odd mile is accomplished by an express train in about two and a half hours, and on a clear day is one of the most delightful train journeys in Europe, with narrow valleys, rapids and ruins marking every turn.

As the train negotiates the low-lying Tatra mountains, tunnels lead to the dramatic defile of Strecno before reaching RU20mberok, a town situated prettily above several mineral springs. It is a quiet place, perfect for excursions to the Matras, the next tier of Carpathians, between the Fatras and the Tatras.

Two miles south of here is the Liptovsky kriz, an eighteenth-century church made of wood, capable of holding more than 600 worshippers, although not a single nail seems to have been used during its construction.

Beyond Rutomberok, the railway suddenly offers a fine view of the chief summits of the Carpathians. The line crosses the watershed here between the Baltic and the Black Sea before descending to Strba, from where a dramatic view can be had of the highest of the Tatras, once named after the Austrian Emperor Franz Josef and then after the first president of the Czechoslovak republic, Masaryk, but now simply called the Great Tatra, or Vysoke Tatry.

Strba Station

Strba is the highest station on the main line and is connected to a number of smaller resorts by funiculars and cog-wheel railways. The station here is invariably crowded with East German, Russian and Czech walkers. Rucksacks and maps are brandished, Thermos flasks waved, and anyone not wearing regulation walking boots is subjected to rigorous and bemused scrutiny.

One of the small railways with its bright red carriages runs from here to the lake of Strbske Pleso, a desolate haunting place in the shadow of the Tatras whose peaks, rising sheer almost from the trees, have even in the heat of summer a menacing aspect.

A typically styleless modern hotel with a reasonable restaurant on one side of the lake in no way detracts from the overwhelming sense of isolation. Thunderstorms occur here with terrifying force.

From Strbske Pleso, which, unless its melancholy beauty seizes the traveller, can be enjoyed quite fruitfully for a couple of hours, another narrow-gauge line runs through the dark pine forests to Star y Smokovec, an old Saxon settlement but since the end of the war inhabited exclusively by Slovaks.

This is the Tatras dressed in the spa-cum-resort facades seen in Bohemia. Large wood-panelled hotels, all in that style of Neo-Baroque-Alpine which was de rigueur in 1912 are still in evidence. Some have been given art-deco interiors and the others have been more recently restored.

In contrast to Carlsbad t lrues,and Marienbad there is a lively atmosphere here and there are no urban developments of the sixties to mar the views. This is the place to put up for a few nights. The Grand Hotel, which should be booked in advance, is with its faded parquetry, still the most luxurious establishment in the Tatras.

From here professional climbers can be hired as guides for more difficult ascents, while the local office of the Carpathian tourist club will provide maps should expeditions be contemplated beyond those suggested by the finger-posts.

A narrow-gauge railway ascends in five minutes (on foot it takes forty-five minutes) to the picturesque Hrebienok, from where signs unpromisingly marked Sliezkydom can be followed for a pleasant afternoon's walk underneath the very highest peaks. Behind us rise the mountains and their lakes, once thought to be the 'eyes' of some sea. In front, below, the valleys fall away towards Kdmarok and Hungary.

Another railway runs from Stary Smokovec to Tatranska Lomnica also essentially a nineteenth-century settlement made up of villas and hotels, although behind some green hedges near the station lie some curious coloured buildings; elegance neglected, with red facings and richly carved wooden pavilions.

At first sight these give the impression of a Himalayan railway station, but an open door, at the time of writing easily penetrated, leads to dusty rooms with encaustic tiles lit from above - clearly once the steam baths of some grand duke on holiday in the Tatras.

Although lower than Smokovec, Tatranska Lomnica has great charm and offers a number of finger-posted walks which, if less dramatic than those described above, offer calm and the almost intoxicating smell of pine.

The days when months were free to spend aimlessly wandering among this, nature's greatest gift to Central Europe, are long past, and no one but the most committed walker will wish to dwell longer than a few days here. Some will question even that amount of time, especially if they are used to the superior comforts of Switzerland or even the Tyrol.

Society and fashion have passed the Tatras by, but the mountains retain their majesty and those who seek unspoilt forests and peaks off the beaten track will find these grey castles of rock a welcome escape.

Excursions to Kezmarok

In the flat lands below, a most interesting excursion can be made for a few hours to Kezmarok, the Kesmark of the Saxons, a sleepy little town with sweet-shops selling pastilles as hard as granite. It is one of the oldest towns in Slovakia, having been granted a royal charter in 1380.
Near the imposing red Protestant church designed by Hansen, the architect of the Vienna Parliament, is an eighteenth-century wooden church. It has quaint wooden spiral columns and is an elegant counterpoise to Hansen's rather overpowering design paid for by some wealthy merchants.

The town itself also possesses an older church with some crude but none the less attractive Baroque carvings strangely at ease inside the building's rude fifteenth-century masonry. Many of the houses which make up the main street and square are from the eighteenth century, and while not one boasts the decorative and architectural quality of such houses in Moravia, taken as a whole the ensemble is attractive. Restaurants are few, but the odd cafe along the main street leading to the station will offer a glass of delicious Slovak red wine, at its best as good as anything in Hungary.

Shreckenstein and eastern Bohemia Czech Republic

As well as legends and chronicles, Schreckenstein has also given rise to countless fairy tales, of which that of Mathilde of Schreckenstein is perhaps the most enduring. Mathilde was captured with her lover by the dreaded Kuba, an inveterate huntsman who was so enraged when the gnomes secreted the lover out of the castle that as revenge he hurled the hapless Mathilde from the battlements.

On dark summer nights it is said that her cries can still be heard echoing around the ruins. As the castle was besieged no less than five times between 1621 and 1648, there are some who say that the rattle of armour and rapiers can also be heard in the nearby woods.

A few miles further down the Elbe lies the altogether less sinister town of Litomerice, again bypassed by the railway and so virtually untouched by the civic pride of the nineteenth century. The town is renowned for its being almost a museum of Octavian Broggio (1668-1742), a gifted architect who imparted several of his more imaginative designs to the town.

He was responsible for the interior of the Jesuit church and the rebuilt church of the Minorites. But it is the chapel of St Vaclav, begun in 1714 on the north slope of the cathedral hill, which gives the best idea of his work, many of whose profiles seem to have been inspired by the Austrian architect Prandtauer. In the nearby huddle of cottages where once coaching inns abounded are several ale houses (marked by the letter 'V' followed by the Czech name).

About four miles to the north-east of Litomeice is Octavian Broggio's one great house, at Ploskovice. The house was later brutally enlarged for Ferdinand I V (1835-48), who insisted on an additional storey which obliterates its proportions. The melancholy garden has plausibly been referred to by Brian Knox as the 'last despairing calculation of an exquisite order.

Eastern Bohemia Czech Republic

From Prague, the former Franz Josef railway runs to Kolin and Podebrady, situated in the heart of eastern Bohemia, a traditional Central European battleground. East of Podebrady unfolds the rolling landscape which witnessed near Kolin the only serious defeat the Austrians ever were able to inflict on their Prussian adversaries. The great victory gained by the Austrian Field-Marshal Daun over Frederick the Great on 18 June 1757 even compelled the Prussians to evacuate Bohemia.

Kolin Bohemia

Kolin itself is a dull place. Many of its oldest houses were rebuilt after a fire in 1734, although the Deanery church of 1360-78, being partly the work of Peter Parler, should not be overlooked. Chancel and nave have been described as 'two tragic acts joined by an irrelevant coup de theatre', a harsh judgement which overlooks the inspiring quality of the craftsmanship. Set above the country's version of Crewe Junction, with its detached belfry of the sixteenth century, it strikes a welcome note of artistic achievement and humanity.

Seolec and Kourim Bohemia

Close to Kolin are two more interesting settlements, Seolec and Kourim. The former is an old Cistercian abbey church of the fourteenth century, remodelled in the early eighteenth century by the wilful Santini. The latter preserves the best defences in Bohemia and has a low aisled Deanery church with an octagonal crypt.

But even these are overshadowed by the glorious architecture of Kutna Hora, known to the Germans for centuries as Kuttenberg, a royal town established in 1308 with at least one church which can stand comparison with any in Europe. Vaclav II (1278-1305) established his mint here, and it is perhaps worth pointing out that in the fifteenth century the population of the town was identical to that of London. By extraordinary good luck it survived both the Hussite wars and a fire in the 1770S to present the traveller today with a maze of streets each adorned with oriels and Rococo fronts.

St Barbara Church

The most important church in the town is that of St Barbara, with endlessly fascinating vaulting attributed to Master Benedict - the vault was closed in 1512 after his death. It is wholly composed of segments and constantly distracts the visitor from the late Gothic wall paintings and the pulpit's fine sixteenth-century stone reliefs. Only the Renaissance confessionals and handsome choir stalls offer some stability among the soaring ribs.

Near to this, if rather intimidated by it, is the Baroque church of St John Nepomuk, designed in 1734 by Kanka. In the Kamenny Dum, or former Town Hall, is another treasure, the Vaclav chapel, with ball-flower ornament and pinnacles. The nearby Ursulin convent is octagonal in plan and is the work of Kilian Dientzenhofer. It offers a more pleasing retreat than the dull mining museum expensIvely created in the rooms of the Town Hall. Of the other churches in the town, the Trinity, late Gothic of the 1490s, seems to be permanently locked and has no obvious means of access.

East to Hradeck Kralove

East of here the roads all seem to be sign posted to Hradec Kralove, known (as Koniggriitz) to military historians as the site of the decisive battle in the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, a six-week engagement which ousted Austria from her position of supremacy among the German states. The battle, which was one of the bloodiest of the nineteenth century, saw the Austrians attempt to use their theatrical frontal bayonet charges for the last time.

The Prussian needle guns turned the battle into a massacre as one by one the Austrian regiments were mown down. The loss of officers was particularly high - on average a third killed, another third wounded - owing to their reckless habit of personally leading the bayonet charges. It can truly be said that Austrian bravery on that day was ill-served by the incompetence of the staff officers who repeatedly ordered these futile assaults.

As a reminder of this slaughter, various monuments on the battlefield have survived. Hradec Kralove itself has an oval Baroque chapel among the remains of its old fortifications and a rather severe Gothic 'White Tower' dating from 1574, but otherwise little to detain one. South of here lies the most beautiful town in eastern Bohemia, Litomysl, and another example of the beneficial effects of being bypassed by the railways. Its square still retains almost all its medieval arcades, only one of them falling victim to clumsy conversion into a cement-faced hotel.

The local Baroque mason was Jifi Beba, who seems to have been responsible for the north wing of the Town Hall and the houses in the square numbered 53 and 61. No. 110, U Vrytim, with a sturdy knight on its 1546 facade, offers refreshment.

The nearby Piarist's church is the work of Alliprandi and can be dated from 1714, while the Jan Avostalis house, constructed rather grandly between 1568 and 1575, is considered one of the most important works of Bohemian Renaissance. Its loggia on the second floor reveals a world of chivalry and battle - the whole of Bohemian nobility seems to be waging war across its walls.

From Litomysl, minor roads wind north to Nachod, with its Renaissance castle, via a broad valley which is almost a museum of Kilian Dientzenhofer churches: Broumov, Vernerovice and Hermankovice all boast examples of his art and will occupy anyone with a car for the best part of a day.

Southern Bohemia and the Rose Towns

Those who have seen enough of north and eastern Bohemia may wish to return to the west and to Austria through southern Bohemia and the so-called rose towns.

The sleepy countryside of southern Bohemia has also known more than its fair share of violence. The forerunners of the Schwarzenberg family, the Rosenbergs, contested almost every town here, choosing as their badge a rose and so echoing the more sanguinary conflicts of the Middle Ages in England.

At Slavenice, a former staging post between Prague and Vienna, the gabled square still recalls these troubled times with various contemporary inscriptions, while at nearby Telc (good restaurant at NO.7, Cerny Orel), Renaissance sgraffito adorns many of the two-storey houses. Telc itself is notable for the fourteenth-century castle of the Hradec family, which contains a pleasing old chapel, and the unique concentration of seventeenth-century facades which give the town the atmosphere of a stage set.

From Telc, a bus service frequently runs to Jindrichuv Hradec, whose castle contains a spectacular three-storey arcade and a rotonda by an unknown Italian architect clearly impressed by the theatrical possibilities of his commission. The gardens are untended, but the whole effect is impressive.

From Telc, it is only a few miles to the finest rose in southern Bohemia, the great gardens and palace of Cesky Krumlov. The town itself is not without interest and a couple of days could be spent enjoying its varied treasures.

The principal gate to the town is a massive essay in Serlio. Past this the streets twist off to right and left. Those houses to the east shelter the remains of various seventeenth-century monastic buildings before a bridge most picturesquely crosses the Moldau.

This leads eventually, after some inns best selected according to taste and instinct, to the town square (Cedok office on the right), a plain space only partly enlivened by the Town Hall and the nearby nineteenth-century Hotel Ruze (comfortable). The picturesque 'Kaplanka' next to the town church has an oriel and vaulted rooms which seem hardly to have altered at all since 1520.

The Church of St Vitus

The nearby church of Svaty Vit (St Vitus), however, with its empty triple nave, is less inspiring. But from it there opens out a magnificent view of tpe castle with its thirteenth-century tower. The immense rectangular mass of stone, with its late Gothic windows, again evokes Anthony Hope.

Inside, its cold maze of rooms seems a most unfriendly home for a wealthy princely family, and its staircases are cramped and ugly. The guide is clearly most impressed by the Rococo chapel dedicated to St George and the blue and pink long gallery. But it is the theatre which is most memorable. Its battered eighteenth-century gold stage is still intact.

Outside, the gardens seem to stretch as far as the Austrian frontier.
Less than seventy years ago, a private army dressed in white and blue guarded the castle's approaches, while an equally numerous army of gardeners attempted to meet princely demands and grow pineapples between the hedges.

No account of rumlov would be complete without reference to the legend of the White Lady, a hapless princess married to a monster of a man in the Middle Ages. Needless to say, her apparition is still a regular sight to some of the older villagers, heralding impending catastrophe and still, despite the rhetoric of communism, impressing some Czechs more than the combined teachings of Lenin and Marx. Her uneasy steps are all that remain of the lost order which ruled Krumlov for so long.

From here a road winds west to Prachatice, with more sgraffitoed houses, Husinec, once a home of itinerant musicians, and other villages which still have traces of a pre-industrial revolution existence. But if the dollars are runnin~ out, the road south leads past the fortified town of Rozmberk (Rosenberg) and a ruined monastery into the less gentle but also less melatlcholy hills of Upper Austria.

Things to see and do in Bohemia Czech Republic

Take a trip through Bohemia´s central park, past the bandstand with its elegant wooden patterns, the path runs to the left of the Catholic church (locked except on Sundays) and past the former Hotel Kreuz, with its creeper-covered balcony, onto the main road of the spa. This is another leafy avenue which boasts on the left the tedok office, where accommodation can be arranged, and on the right a splendid house where Beethoven stayed in 1812.

The black and gold plaque in Teutonic script records the precise date, while inside, an empire mirror and an unusual portrait of the composer, clearly installed shortly afterwards, are as touching a memorial to him as anything to be found in the countless Beethoven museums of Austria and Germany.

Further down from this house is the Hotel Slovan, one of the few boarding houses which are open to western travellers. Although drastically restored in the seventies, the eccentric caryatids on the staircase ceilings have been lovingly preserved.

The Francis Spring Bohemia

At the end of this avenue is the chief drinking well, the so-called Francis spring, named after that severe emperor who was the last Habsburg to wear the crown of the Holy Roman Empire. The spring stands under a Greek Doric rotunda filled with gleaming polished brass pipes. On one side runs the colonnade whose columns provide very necessary shelter from what seem in June to be constant thunderstorms.

During the morning the columns are lined with walkers sipping water from porcelain jugs with long spouts, but in the evening they are generally as quiet as a Greek temple. The only permanent character is a snarling bust of Lenin, whose demonic expression is not in the slightest mollified by the lush flower-beds surrounding him.

On the other side of the spring is a large hall known as the casino though gambling rarely takes place in its grand saloons. Instead it serves as a general meeting place for lectures and rallies. It is an unfortunate fact of life in Czechoslovakia that even on holiday the ominous rhetoric of communism continues to thunder its phrases out of strategically placed loudspeakers. In Franzensbad, this usually starts at about 7.45 am., diluted by sequences, interminably repeated, of some Tchaikovsky plano concerto.

This can be escaped by following the road round the back of the casino to the evangelical church, past the faded signs of old pension houses, which were named after towns in the Austrian empire. The road running along the edge of the park from here leads to the gaudily restored Russian church which, like most Russian churches, boasts a picturesque assortment of domes. Beyond it, on the Kollarova is an impressive conservatory restaurant belonging to one of the dums: At the end of the Kollarova is the theatre, a cu'rious early twentieth-century building made up of cubist motifs which are strangely jarring in this more classical setting of park and villas.

A few minutes' walk through the park leads to the former Villa Imperiale, a picturesque building, horribly gutted inside but doubtless, judging by the row of West German cars parked outside, a comfortable place to stay.

From here an avenue of oaks leads to the rather Parisian-looking former Kaiserbad, another temple dedicated to water, which bubbles between the polished brass pipes. A bust nearby commemorates Dr Adler, one of the spa's most eminent physicians, who was responsible for discovering many of the potent cures to be found in the waters around here.

Beyond these yellow baths is a small stream. The deserted grass around it is a frequent playground for rabbits, especially at dusk. Across the stream, a straight path leads uphill to a fork. The left turning brings the walker immediately into the country, for Franzensbad, unlike Marienbad and Carlsbad, is not hemmed in by narrow valleys.

The Bohemian foothills

The route, indicated by red and white markers, provides a series of panoramic views of the Bohemian foothills. All that is lacking, as the road runs down to village ponds and up to deserted crossroads, is a pub or hostelry - the houses are mostly quiet buildings with little to invite the stranger across their thresholds.

A second walk, in the opposite direction to this and with a cafe at the end of it, runs from the Rush near the former Kaiserbad towards the railway. After passing underneath two railway bridges, the path runs uphill and is marked by a series of red hearts through the woods, which lead ultimately to a small cafe surrounded by trees and the scent of acacia.

From Franzensbad, there are frequent buses to Marienbao, that favourite spa of Edward VII who, both as king and as Prince of Wales, insisted on spending much of his summer at this unpretentious town. Unlike Franzensbad, it lies in a charming valley enclosed on three sides by pine-clad hills.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the region was still an impenetrable wilderness. Then the springs which belonged to the nearby abbey of Tepl were found by various eminent men of medicine to possess curative qualities, and development began. Villas shot up, hotels appeared and with the visits of such fashionable European royalty as Prince Edward this small spa became for a few weeks each year the centre of European diplomacy, as foreign ministers from Vienna and St Petersburg came to take the waters between intense discussions in their respective hotels with the private secretaries of any convalescent royalty present.

Marienbad trips

It was at Marienbad that Edward tried on occasions to detach the Austrian emperor, Franz Josef,that aged bastion of the old order, away from Germany and the steadfast alliance between the two empires which was to have such disastrous consequences for Europe in 1914. Of all this diplomatic activity, there is little to remind us in today's Marienbad. Above the boulevard stands the first of two poignant relics of Marienbad's Edwardian past, the English church.

It is as melancholy a sight as anything to be seen in Central Europe-its tracery bare save for a few fragments of Clayton and Bell glass left in the west end's rose window, its pews ripped out, its walls scribbled Upon. At the time of writing the vestry door is conveniently absent, so that this most maudlin of Victorian ruins can be examined at will.

Inside, the light shines through onto the only decorative objects to have survived intact, a memorial plaque to Edward VII, 'Emperor of India by grace of God'. Next to it some Czech wag has scribbled 'God Save the Queen'. Where once a monarch and his entourage regularly worshipped, there remains only dust and decay.

This is a sombre way to begin a visit to a spa, but the rest of the town is far from cheering. The Russian church further down the road above the English church is in rather more robust state, but its colours are so vulgar as to seriously inhibit any enjoyment of it. From here the road leads down to the principal square of the town.

Each of the small hotels has wood-panelled rooms which have remained unchanged for decades, and a small yellow theatre off to the left has retained its stuccoed interior.
To the right, along the top of a leafy embankment, rises the most impressive structure in the entire town: the long winding colonnade which, with its magnificent iron columns, could easily be the work of the ubiquitous Helmer and Fellner partnership.

Inside, the scores of walkers sipping water as they perambulate up and down cut a grotesque figure. Each one holds a small china tea-pot from whose nozzle the healing waters are periodically sucked in the way people chew on pipes. The arcade itself has been ruthlessly restored. Where once it was possible to walk on stone, there is only linoleum. Where paintings hung on the walls, there are now only ugly bronzes. As a laconic comment on this state of affairs, the face of the nineteenth¬century clock has slid round, so that the numeral six is where twelve normally stands.

A fine yellow villa opposite restores some hope. It boasts the only facade in Central Europe which has a three-dimensional representation in stucco of an American steam-engine. This and an abandoned pair of kettle-drums in the centre are perhaps the more memorable sights of this colonnade, which once saw a portly King of England amble along surrounded by the excited and curious eyes of hundreds of onlookers. But then today the arcade is named after Maxim Gorki rather than a Habsburg archduke.

At the end of the colonnade there is at the time of writing a large building site. The earnest spa officials proudly proclaim that this will soon be the grandest and noblest of all the springs, but a model of the design suggests that whatever fills this hole will be completely out of tune with the classical architecture around it.

To the right of this is the bronze statue of the Abbot Reitenberger (d. 1860), who, like Dr Joseph Neyr, whose wizened features are com¬memorated nearby in a bronze bust, did much to promote the prosperity of the baths. On a small square on the other side of the colonnade rises the large imposing Catholic church, an uninspired work of the 1840s, usually open during the week.

Behind it, across another square, stands the second surviving link with King Edward, the former Hotel Weimar (now the Hotel Kafka), where the monarch would put up during his sojourns here. It is almost inconceivable that the rooms of this unpretentious establishment once resounded to the talk of state secrets.

The painting which once hung in its dining room depicting the 'Uncle of Europe' on one of his strolls through the colonnades has disappeared, while the memorial statues in the nearby garden depicting the Austrian emperor and the English king also seem to have been lost. Only over the main entrance does the Gothic script of old German plaque recall the illustrious personage who enjoyed rooms on the first floor during the town's Edwardian summers.

The Spa Museum


Next to the hotel is the spa museum, a curious building containing on its first floor the remains of Goethe's house - the poet still enjoys the authorities' esteem - with the furniture on which the master wrote during his frequent stays here a few generations before King Edward. On the ground floor, a bird's-eye panorama view of the spa shows the English church in all its old glory, while rooms to the right contain a thin collection of Marienbadalia, with nothing which even remotely refers to the heady diplomatic life of the town in the early 1900s. A series of portraits of the spa's doctors, earnest and well groomed, is well displayed, while behind another case are a number of old biscuit tins which once held the famous Oblaten, those large thin wafers which are the great speciality of the region and which even today are delicious when found at their best (that is in tins rather than packets).

From the museum, various paths run up to the Hamelika hills, passing Beaux-Arts-style baths, including the remarkable Moor's bath, whose interior is still a riot of nineteenth-century arts-and-crafts decor. Of the many paths which thread the pine forest here, that above the Pod Panoramou leading to the Cafe Miramonte is perhaps the favourite.

The Bohemian Hills and mountains

It passes several interesting viewpoints, including one which, according to a plaque, was frequented by Goethe. Above the Miramonte, the summit of the hill offers views of the Bohemian hills and mountains. The former 'Kaiser Tower' has been rather crudely adapted to this century and, like so many things which recall empires and monarchies in this part of the world, renamed.

From here a path marked by yellow finger-posts winds its way slowly down to the Cervena Karkulka, a restaurant surrounded by woods which is a favourite eating place of the spa guests, who then return to the town centre by way of the Rudolf spring.

Places to go in Prague

The differences between Catholics and Protestants reached a head in Bohemia with the succession to the throne in 1618.

The Catholic councillors had arranged for the Archduke Ferdinand, a determined persecutor of Protestants, to succeed King Matthias. To head this off, Count Thurn and the other Protestant nobles met to deal with the Catholic councillors who had been appointed by Ferdinand over their heads. Ulrich of Kinsky proposed that the royal councillors should be poniarded in the council chamber, but Thurn's suggestion, that they should be thrown from the windows of Hradcany palace, prevailed.

Early on the morning of the memorable 23 May, these representatives of Protestantism, their rapiers drawn, their breastplates gleaming in the sun, proceeded to the Hradcany. When they reached the council room what contemporary chroniclers refer to, with surprising understatement, as a 'stormy discussion' arose. Martinic and Slavata, the two Catholic councillors, were accused of being traitors and worthless disciples of the Jesuits.

What followed is perhaps best described in the words of the seventeenth-century historian Skala Ze Zhore: 'No mercy was granted them and they were both thrown dressed in their cloaks with their rapiers and decorations head-first out of the western window into a moat beneath the palace. They loudly screamed "Ach, ach owehl" and attempted to hold on to the narrow window-ledge, but Thurn beat their knuckles with the hilt of his sword until they were both obliged to let go.

This act of violence precipitated the Thirty Years War, which was to lay the country so completely to waste. From these tumultuous events, a few steps outside, behind the cathedral, lead to the Romanesque basilica of St George, its rather Dalmatian-looking towers dressed in an early Baroque facade. The towers date from the year 970 and the interior, which has also had to cope with Baroque additions, is a calm barn of a building with massive round piers and depressed arches. In the crypt the piers are shorter and thinner, with seventeenth-century vaulting, while the south entrance to the church boasts an undistinguished Renaissance gateway.

The National Gallery Prague

From St George's, the road descends to the right along the Jirska.
There may be some who will be tempted to return to the castle and wander among the paintihgs in the bleak white rooms belonging to the National Gallery, but though there is much here to match the treasures in Vienna or Budapest, at the end of the Jirska is the entrance to the palace gardens which, as well as offering memorable views, contain some of the most remarkable garden architecture erected anywhere this century.

Walking along, the eye is constantly amused by marble temples and obelisks, all beautifully finished, if rather monumental. Their strange Mediterranean forms are curious legacies of Plecnik's imagination, and they culminate in a dramatic flight of stairs, at the bottom of which rests a large water rbasin. The gardens and distant domes beneath are a happy contrast tp the long humourless barrack-like facades, which, save for the odd Etruscan gesture imparted to them by Plecnik, are almost impossible to admire.

Almost opposite the first entrance to the Hradcany, a cafe with a terrace of leafy trees will serve food and drinks. The impressive three¬storey palais facing this, with its three central bays raised over a Serlian arch, is the Archbishop's Palace, dating from the sixteenth century but clothed in the language of Louis Seize in the 1760s by Jan Wirch. The Hradcanske namesti behind is full of other impressive palaces, of which the Schwarzenberg's sgraffito rustication immediately catches the eye. It dates from the 1540S and has a rather Neapolitan swagger about it.

Inside is an interesting if propaganda-orientated collection of militaria. The courtyard in the summer, however, is the scene of hilarious medieval mimes involving impressive displays of swordsmanship and a dramatic skill which can keep spectators of any nationality on the edge of their seats. The shows are a thoroughly Bohemian affair, with the Czechs' natural talent for acting and clowning brilliantly exposed through a series of fortunately fairly simple plots.

At the centre of this square stands a rather dull Baroque monument to the Virgin Mary. Opposite the Palais Schwarzenberg is the modern art gallery housed in the Palais Stern beck, a picturesque building attributed to Martinelli and Alliprandi.

From here the Palais Martinic, with its seventeenth-century gables, leads the way to the narrow Kanovnicka which, passing a gate to the castle from which overgrown paths invitingly fall below, eventually leads to the Kapucinska, another precious gas-lit lane.

The Loreto Church Prague

The Loreto church in Prague is well worth a visit, and its facade is the work of the Dientzenhofers. Its long irregular facade is full of fantasy and is the perfect antidote to the monstrous pile of the Palais Cernin (1669-7) which towers opposite it. This wretched building, with its hideous gigantic order and relentless pediments, is predictably the work of Caratti. Though its garden front is relieved by two enormous Serlian arches, the entire structure is as irrelevant to its surroundings as a space-station would be to Venice.

Needless to say, those who commissioned it soon grew weary of being besieged by its earnestness and even before the collapse of the Habsburg empire it had been relegated to its only possible use, that of a barrack. But to return to the Loreto church. With what humour the Dientzenhofers must have relished creating a facade which in every way mocks the massive pedantry of Caratti. Inside, the church is a riot of Baroque stucco and frescoes, uninhibited in a way which only the temporary presence here of Christ's birthplace en route for Loreto could perhaps justify.

The Strahov Monastery Prague

Concealed behind the church however is even greater treasure, an imitation of the celebrated Santa Casa of Loreto executed between 1626 and 1631 by Giovanni Orsi and Andrea Allio, with well-proportioned twin Corinthian half-columns. From here, the Pohorelec leads past several late Renaissance buildings and the light Rococo Palais Kucera to the Strahov monastery, almost at the highest spot of the town and commanding exceptional views of the cathedral.

The abbey was founded in 1140. In the courtyard are the former church - the order has been suppressed - and the library, with an effete facade on the fringes of Neo-Classicism from the 1780s by Ignac Palliardi. The interior of the library and the former abbey garden would both merit two asterisks on a pre-war guide, although both seemed at the time of writing to be inaccessible, so that neither the magnificent stucco work of Orsi nor the beautiful bookcases of Palliardi could be as much as glimpsed. The gardens generally are less difficult to enter, but the splendid view of the cathedral from there is often denied by a shabby man in a blue suit, impossible even to bribe.

Returning to the Hradcany along the Uvoz, it is tempting to branch off to the right through the acres and acres of orchards which in season envelop the hillside, so that a few minutes' walk among them instantly banishes the city.

Those interested in ethnography should take these blossomed paths, for at the end of them is the Villa Kinsky, with a beautiful collection of ethnographic costumes, introduced by a taped commentary usually running slow and so presenting a lugubrious description of the museum's exhibits.

Prague architecture

But if architecture as well as nature is wanted, it is perhaps better to follow the U Prasneho mostu to the Marianske Hradby, at the northern end of which stands the exotic Belvedere, a harmonious Renaissance arcaded loggia erected in 1536 to the designs of one Paolo della Stella. An attractive Renaissance fountain stands in front of the arcades, whose gentle symmetry is brilliantly set off by the maverick roof, reminiscent in shape of a Turkish tent.

From this eccentric structure, various paths run through the former Chotek Gardens to a pagoda cafe where, overlooking the Moldau, with a cool breeze blowing, sunset over the golden city can be enjoyed as its melancholy beauty falls asleep in the glow of green gas-light.

Things to see and do in Prague

If you are visiting Prague, don´t miss a trip to the beautiful church of St Martin-on-the-Walls, a name referring to its proximity to the old fortifications. The church has stood here since the thirteenth century and is essentially a Romanesque construction which was adapted to Gothic during the second half of the fourteenth century.

Although it was restored during the first decade of this century, it remains in atmosphere remarkably medieval and serves today as the evangelical church of the Bohemian Brothers. On the nearby Uhelny trh, the house at the corner with the arches is believed to be where Mozart lived in 1787. A plaque and a crumbling relief over the main facade commemorate this.

From here the Skofepka leads to Betlemske mim, where the twin white gables of the Bethlem chapel seem rather new for a building purporting to be medieval. This is because the original chapel was demolished at the end of the eighteenth century and what we now see is the work of Jaroslav Fnigner, carried out to the original plans but during the 1950S. The reason for this unique and in its own way remarkable piece of reconstruction of what is at first glance a far from distinguished building is that it was here that Jan Hus held some of his earliest services in Czech rather than Latin.

The Husova Prague

The Husova, which runs from here, contains the large Dominican church erected in 1339-71 by Drzice and Arnost von Pardubice but later given a Baroque interior by Frantisek Spacek in the 1730S. The showy stucco decoration of the interior dates from this time and contains sculptures by Matthias Schonherr. The Husova itself is one of the oldest streets in Prague and is rich in gables, although the narrowness of the street makes them difficult to appreciate.


On the right down the Karlova is the Male nam., or small square or ring, a welcome space adorned by a faultless series of buildings whose pediments and gables make as pretty a skyline as can be seen in Central Europe. At the centre of this square is an iron-surrounded Renaissance fountain dating from the sixteenth century.

To the left of this, the Petzold house has a late Renaissance facade with sgraffito decoration, while behind the fountain is the Judge's House, with a classical portal attributed to Johann Kranner, who is believed to have built it in 1798. There are several cafes here where, despite a service which is almost Balkan in its slowness, a pleasant half-hour can be spent taking in these restful surroundings.

The Male nam. leads directly to the most important square in the old tarometske nam. Graced at one end by the tower of the Town Hall and at the other by the twin towers of the Teyn church, this must be one of the most beautiful squares in the world. Without waiting to examine each of the Jewels which make up the whole, the thing to do now is to ascend the tower of the Town Hall. Far less exhausting than that of St Stephen's cathedral in Vienna, it is sufficiently low to provide at close quarters a view of the roofs and gables which are so elusive from the narrow street.

The Hradcany Castle Prague

Across the river rises the barrack of a palace which is the Hradcany castle embracing the Gothic cathedral of St Vitus. On the horizon there are some alarming concrete blocks of flats, but these sinister things should be ignored and the picturesque sights immediately below examined more carefully. As well as its tower, the Town Hall is graced by a magnificent astronomical clock.

The work of Nikolaus von Kadail, dating from about 1410, the clock has been restored several times. The Gothic detailing and statuary of the clock belong partly to the beginning of the fifteenth century and partly to the early sixteenth. The allegories of the twelve months are, however, only an 1864 copy of the original.

Next to this is a fine piece of middle-pointed Gothic around the door to the Town Hall. This dates from 1475 and is believed to have been the work of Matej Rejsek, a mason who also worked on part of St Vitus's cathedral. His name is also associated with the beautiful 'Erker chapel' beneath the tower, an exquisite oriel window, dating from 1389 but adorned with coats of arms from a century later. The chapel was de¬stroyed during the war but has been partly restored. At the corner stands a copy of a Gothic Madonna.

The main wing of the building next to this is nineteenth-century Gothic revival. To the right of the Town Hall, the square opens up dramatically towards the Baroque facade of St Nicholas's church, an important work of Kilian Dientzenhofer dating from the 1730S with sculpture by Anton Braun. Originally built by the Benedictines, the church now belongs to the Czechoslovak state and is rarely open to the public. Inside, the frescoes are the work of the Bavarian painter Cosmas D. Asam and recall the legend of St Benedict and St Nicholas.

Near the centre of the square stands a rather incongruous, straggling group of statues built in 1915 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the death of John Hus. It is a strange mixture of realism and art nouveau, but whatever its merits as an individual work of art, it cannot be seen as a happy addition to the square.

The Gothic School Prague

To the east of this, in front of the twin towers of the Teyn church, rise the picturesque gables of the early Gothic Teyn school. The gables are curiously reminiscent of some Venetian scuola and are later than the rest of the building. The highly ornate Rococo palace to its right is the former Goltz-Kinsky palace, built between 1755 and 1765 to K. I. Dientzenhofer's designs. Today it contains the absorbing graphic collection of the Czech National Gallery.

The Teyn Church Prague

The Teyn church, so often covered in scaffolding, has been under restoration for years, but if progress continues at the present pace it may soon be possible to see more than just the twin pointed towers crowned by four graceful turrets and the high-pitched roof which was added in 1460 shortly after George Podiebrad was crowned King of Bohemia here.

It was he who caused the facade to be adorned by a large chalice, the symbol of the Hussites whose church this was. But after the battle of the White Mountain (1620) the chalice was replaced by an image of the Virgin. With a little luck, it should at least be possible to see the round-arched north doorway, dating from 1390. This imposing baldachin arch, with its delicate tracery, is attributed to Peter Parler, the great medieval craftsman. The lower right console contains two beautiful sculptures of the evangelists Mark and John.

Inside, the church seems at first to be rather cluttered. The Gothic vaulting and arcades are filled with high altars, of which that under a Gothic baldachin in the north aisle is the most interesting. The work of Matej Rejsek, it dates from the last decade of the fifteenth century. Attached to the last south-eastern pier is the red-marble tombstone of the celebrated Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (d. 1601), who was invited to Prague in 1599.

In front of this sombre figure, clutching in one hand a globe and in the other quite wisely, given the turbulence of the times a sword, there is a magnificent Baroque candelabra. These and a pewter Gothic font are the chief treasures of the church, although there is some Gothic wooden carving on several of the side altars which should not be overlooked.

From the Teyn church, return to the Town Hall, perhaps lingering at The door numbered 601. This leads to a courtyard at the end of which a further door brings us into the dark and sombre interior. over some Slovak wine at a nearby bar before taking the Karlova, where almost immediately to our right a quartet of Titans struggling to support a heavy Baroque portal remind us of the presence in this city of another great Baroque architect whose dramatic sculpture we are already familiar with: Fischer von Erlach.

In the few minutes spent wandering around the old town, it has been possible to admire the achievements of the two great Dientzenhofer architects and recognize a lighter less exuberant Baroque. Here Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach's palace takes us back to the exotic world of Prince Eugen's Winter Palace in Vienna with something of a jolt.

The lavish mass of the Clam-Gallas Palace at the end of the narrow Husova has a profusion of relief carving which is unmistakably Viennese. For years, its blackened fatyade has been covered in scaffolding and its fine Carlo Carlone frescoes around the splendid staircase are almost impossible to see, but even in permanent restoration the building has a forceful personality unmatched by any other Baroque palace on this side of the river.

The Gallas family exists no more one of the very few of the 'ersle Gesellschafl' to die out but at the beginning of the eighteenth century, when this palace was built, the family was to spawn not only ambassadors to England but also viceroys of Naples. This dazzling pile is as fine an epitaph for them as any funerary monument.

The Charles Bridge Prague

From here the Karlova, which is usually being dug up for tram lines, leads to the Charles Bridge. Before crossing this most spectacular of bridges, a slight detour to the right will bring one to the remains of the former ghetto. Once divided from the rest of the old town by walls, the ghetto was a focus for trade and intellectuals. During the reign of the reforming eighteenth-century Joseph I I the walls were demolished and Jews began to playa vital part in the public life of the city.

The Kfizovnicka which leads to it ironically takes us past a veritable barrack of Catholicism in the form of the Clementinum.

Prague is expressive of the power once enjoyed by the Jesuits in the country. Its libraries are rich in barley-sugar columns, with a tower for stargazing and courtyards for masquerades in which various Dei ex machina would chasten those weak in faith. Today, the only chastening comes from the sullen porters, who insist on making it as difficult as possible to see either the refectory, mathematical room or library.

The Jewish Cemetary in Prague

Beyond the Clementinum is a wall behind which trees enclose a small elevated garden littered with tombs. This is the Jewish cemetery, perhaps one of the best-known and certainly most bizarre sights of Central Europe. Laid out in the fifteenth century, it was the principal Jewish burial ground of the city until 1787, since when no more graves have been added. The selective eye of the camera captures the melancholy decay of this place more than a long sustained glance, although even without any knowledge of Hebrew the visitor will find several of the tombstones merit close inspection for their decoration. Of the 20,000 to be seen, the oldest dates from 1439, while the most valuable all date from the eighteenth century.

It may be tempting to linger here, with the sunlight filtering through the trees, but there are more cheery sights to be explored over the Charles Bridge. The slight curve of the bridge, with its distant pinnacles and the Baroque dome of St Nicholas's beyond, cry out for galloping horses, but the days when it was possible to ride across are long past and we should be content to walk slowly under the watchful eyes of the statues of St Francis Xavier and his pious companions.

The most notable of these is the bronze statue of St John Nepomuk, the patron saint of Bohemia. He stands in the middle of the bridge and is the work of Matthias Rauchmuller of Nuremberg, who excuted it in 1683. Between the sixth and the seventh pillars on the right is a slab of marble with a cross, marking the spot where the saint is said to have been flung from the bridge in 1383 by order of Wenzel IV for refusing to betray what his wife the empress had told him in the confessional. According to legend, the body then floated for a con-siderable time in the river with five brilliant stars hovering over its head.

As well as the memory of these events, the bridge also affords incomparable views of the Hradcany castle, with its Baroque facades, and, to the left, the stately and recently renovated National Theatre. At night, the view is even more picturesque, while in winter the steam rising from the freezing water adds even more to the impressiveness forged here by masonry and nature.

Szekesfehervar Hungary

Zeesfehervar, the Romans' Herculia or Alba Regia, was in medieval times the spiritual centre of Hungary. Until 1527, the kings were crowned in the town and most members of the royal family were buried there. Between 1543 and 1688, the city fell into neglect under the Turkish occupation and most of the medieval architecture was destroyed, but the routing of the Turks led here, as in so many other settlements in the country, to a flourishing of Baroque architecture, so that the old town has a picturesque and rambling street plan dotted with many charming examples of eighteenth-century architecture, usually of the Zopf, or late Louis Seize, variety.

The centre of the town is the Szabadsag ter. The large Council Hall consists of a western wing built in 1690 and an eastern wing of three storeys constructed at the end of the eighteenth century in a late Baroque style.

In the same square stands the more spirited Bishop's Palace, designed by Jakob Rieder and built between 1790 and 1801. The facade, with its pairs of Corinthian pilasters, is rather Neo-C1assical, the entire front being crowned with a massive coat of arms. The interior contains rooms in empire and Biedermeier styles and the library possesses over 40,000 volumes (apply to the porter).

At the eastern end of Szabadsag Square is a lapidarium with several medieval objects dating from the destroyed eleventh-century royal bas¬ilica, where kings were crowned and buried. A sarcophagus described as Venetian-Byzantine is reputed to have been the tomb of Stephen I, the first King of Hungary.

Wandering along the Marcius 15 utca brings us to another treasure of the city, the Cistercian church, constructed in the 1750s. Its Baroque interior is rather upstaged by the magnificent Rococo cabinets in the sacristy. A former Jesuits' chemist's with a Rococo interior is nearby at the sign of the Black Eagle, as is also the nineteenth-century Vorosmarty theatre.

Nearby is the town museum or Istvan Kiraly house in the Gagarin Square. Old photographs, models and the usual post-1945 reconstruction exhibits are displayed here. Not far from the Arany Janos utca is the cathedral. The building is Baroque and both the sanctuary and the main altar are the work of Franz Anton Hillebrandt, whose name we have encountered in Vienna. It strikes a note of a grander order, serious but lavish.

The ceiling of the nave is decorated with scenes from the life of King Stephen 1. In the crypt are to be seen the red marble caskets of the Hungarian King Bela III who ruled from 1174 to 1196. Near the cathedral stands the Gothic St Anne chapel, which was built in about 1470. It is an impressive building whose three high Gothic windows are accented by a curious lantern on the roof. A small but intricate rose window has been cut through the thick masonry of the west end. The interior, a single space vaulted by thin ribs, is sombre.

The Churches of Hungary

In the Petofi Sandor utca rises the former Baroque church of the Carmelites, which contains a series of superb frescoes executed before 1770 by Franz Anton Maulbertsch, illustrating various scenes from the New Testament. The chancel contains a work by the eighteenth-century Bavarian sculptor Hauser and some contemporary Baroque stalls. Next door in the former seminary of the Carmelites is a museum of eccles¬iastical art.

The Serbian Orthodox church in the Rae utca is also worth visiting. It is an eighteenth-century building, Baroque in style, and probably the work of a certain Janos Kerschoffer. The choir is semicircular under¬neath a half-dome, with ceiling frescoes illustrating scenes from the life of Christ and John the Baptist. The Rococo icon screen is one of the best of its kind in the country. There is a strange incongruity between this and the Baroque exterior, especially noticeable after a few moments have been spent contemplating the Byzantine style of the rest of the interior.

Szombathely and Fertod Hungary

If, instead of returning to Budapest,the traveller wishes to go back to Vienna from Balaton, efforts should be made to visit Szombathely and Fertod, where there are other treasures.Szombathely, the Savaria of the Romans, is another city with a late eighteenth-century character to its centre. The square at the heart of the settlement is Berzsenyi Daniel ter, which predictably enough is dominated by a Bishop's Palace, the work of Menyhert Hefele and dating from 1779.

Maulbertsch and Dorfmeister were responsible for the frescoes inside, although experts say that neither artist excelled himself here. Hefele left his stamp on Szombathely in a way few other Hungarian architects were able to in other places. He was responsible not only for several of the buildings around the Bishop's Palace but also for the cathedral to the north, the conservatorium opposite it and the cathedral school a case of 'Si monumentum requiris circumspice' which is virtually unrivalled in any Central European city of this size.

The remains of the Roman basilica of St Quirinus, including a beauti¬ful mosaic floor and some sections of Roman military road, are to be found in a lapidarium between the school and the cathedral. Sad to say, though the Hungarian guides seem quite proud of it, a 'modern espresso' has been built in this 'historic setting'.

In the Majakovszkij ter south of the main square, there are the remains of a temple dedicated to the worship of Isis. Savaria seems to have been the northernmost centre of the Isis cult and fragments of the temple are displayed here along with some thousands of other related objects. Those interested in archaeology should also visit the Savaria Museum, which is in the eastern part of the inner city near the railway station. The Fran¬ciscan church nearby, originating in the fifteenth century but rebuilt somewhat licentiously in the seventeenth century, is also worth a glance.

West of Szombathely Hungary

West of Szombathely, on the Austrian frontier, is Koszeg. A small town of barely fifteen thousand inhabitants, it is the highest town in Hungary (300 metres above sea level), almost in the foothills of the Alps. We enter by way of the 'Heroes Gate', erected in 1932 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the great siege, when a handful of Hungarians held up a force of Turks twenty times its size for over a month.

The medieval Jurisich ter, named after the defenders' leader, is the site of the Baroque St Imre's church, constructed in the early seventeenth century. Some of this church dates from medieval times and the detailing is both Renaissance and Gothic. Next to it stands the altogether more restrained Gothic St James church dating from 1400 and evoking Teutonic earnestness. Here the mixture is partly Baroque and partly Gothic, but the splendid wall paintings are fifteenth-century.

The Town Hall nearby is Gothic in origin but was rebuilt in the Baroque period at the same time as the house opposite, whose sgraffito work dates from 1668. The narrow streets which lead from here to the castle are all worth exploring. An old drawbridge leads to the massive inner fortress which houses a museum and a very pleasant wine cellar.

The Strucc Hotel on the corner of Koztarsasag ter was built at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and is the obvious place to stay, despite its modernized interior. Its rooms have views onto the many bastions and towers which survive from the castle's still impressive line of fortifications. Above, a high Calvary church with three steeples built between 1729 and 1735 looks down onto the town and its sur¬roundings. At dusk, as the light recedes across the hills towards the Alps, the streets are almost deserted.

The Esterhazy Palace at Fertod Hungary

From here, with Austria so clearly visible, the last of Hungary's varied treasures beckons, if only to remind one of the great families who built the country into such a powerful force in the years after the Turks were routed. Few names conjure up Magyar nobility with such force as that of Esterhazy, and so it is fitting to leave Hungary paying our respects to the great Esterhazy palace at Fertod.

It is of course no longer the property of this once wealthy family. In Vienna and America, there are rooms adorned with photographs from before the last war of the castle and that last generation of Hungarians. Sometimes they are riding horses, sometimes they are pick¬nicking, but in the background the impressive building is always the same. Often proudly referred to by Hungarians as the Versailles of Central Europe, it is not quite as grand as either the palaces of the Sun¬ King or Maria Theresa, but as the palace of an aristocratic family it is without rival in Hungary.

Built between 1720 and 1766 for Prince Miklos Esterhazy, most of what is seen today was designed by the architect Anton Erhard Martinelli. Martinelli, it may be recalled, designed the Town Hall in Pest The rounded wings, however, are attributed to Miklos Jacoby (1733-84), 'and the transition to the central section has rightly been criticized for being discordant. The happier one-storey ranges which round off the court were erected in the 1760s by Johann Ferdinand Modlhammer.

Visitors enter by a splendid iron gate into the court. Although the palace suffered considerable damage in the Second World War, it has been splendidly restored. The guides offered by the palace administration are more than adequate and great care will be taken to explain the details of the two-storey ceremonial hall of the prince and princess and the de¬lightful series of Chinese rooms.

Part of these have been given over to a Haydn memorial museum. Between 1761 and 1790 Haydn was the court conductor of the Esterhazys and the theatre at Fertod was one of the centres of Rococo Europe, witnessing the first performances of many of Haydn's works. The state rooms were and still are a magnificent setting for that composer's music, even if the theatre and part of the temple complex in the gardens vanished forever in the last years of the war, sacrificed to the shrapnel of a new invading army.

Like so many great houses in Central Europe, the absence of any resident family gives the building a maudlin, empty atmosphere and it is only during the summer when concerts are regularly organized in the palace that something of its former glory is recovered. If we are lucky, we shall leave Hungary with the music of Haydn ringing in our ears.

Western Hungary and Lake Balaton

From Transylvania, the return to Hungary is welcome not least for its material comforts and the absence of daily bartering. A tour of western Hungary reveals many different aspects of Magyar history, from the Turkish minarets of Pecs to the Baroque splendour of the Esterhazy palace at Fertod. Between these two extremes is the magnificent Lake Balaton, with its delightful bathing, popular not least because the summer temperature in this part of Hungary is often the highest to be found in Central Europe. For those in need of a more relaxing sojourn after the bracing challenges of Romania, this part of Hungary is ideal.

Predictably, for a city in which trains going west leave from the eastern railway station, trains going south sometimes depart from the western railway station in Budapest, the picturesque iron-ribbed building constructed by Eiffel. From here, there are trains to Pecs and ether points south.

Kalocsa Hungary

The journey to Pecs, even in an express train, lasts a long afternoon. Though to arrive at this city in the early hours of a balmy summer evening is a delight, it may be better to take a rail or road route to the east of the Danube and break the journey in Kalocsa, an archiepiscopal residence rich in historical associations and an important centre of paprika production. There are few more colourful sights in Hungary today than these red spices drying in the sun at every house.

Adrian Stokes, the English art-historian and writer who spent several summers visiting Hungary before the First World War, observed of Kalocsa that the high street, terminating at one end in the cathedral and in the other in open country, seemed almost a mile long. The vivid market scenes he so ably described in his book on the country can still be seen, although the amount of colourful costume is no longer as great, as the apron is gradually replaced by the trouser-suit. This great thoroughfare, the Istvan Kiraly ut, is lined with cafes and hotels, most of which are worth patronizing. At its climax rises an impressive eighteenth-century ensemble.

The Baroque cathedral, designed by Andreas Mayerhoffer, dates from the 1730s and replaced an earlier Gothic structure which had been destroyed by the Turks. The imposing building in the Baroque style of the 1760s next to it is the Archbishop's Palace, constructed a little later by a Piarist priest called Gaspar Oswald and rich in early manuscripts and books (ring the bell three times). Among these, the visitor will be shown on request a copy of a Bible reputed to have once belonged to Martin Luther. Its walls have some fine frescoes, notably those in the dining room by Maulbertsch.

The nearby folk art museum re-creates the world which must have been a familiar sight to Adrian Stokes and other travellers to Hungary before the last war bright costumes, guarded here by ceaselessly knit¬ting women.

There are several other Baroque buildings of note in the vicinity, most of which would appear, like the Archbishop's Palace, to be the work of Gaspar Oswald.

During the eighteenth century, a number of Baroque buildings were erected in Pecs. Shortly afterwards rich coal deposits found in the immediate surroundings made the city even wealthier, and a porcelain factory was established by the family Zsolnay. Today, however, Pecs is a quiet place, tranquillized by the heat and the fine wines of the nearby Mecsek hills.

Regardless of whether arrival is by train or car, sooner or later we shall come to the Szechenyi ter, which is the heart of the city and to which no fewer than twelve roads lead. It is dominated at the centre by the largest surviving Turkish building in Hungary, the Ghazi Kassim Mosque, which for centuries has served as a Roman Catholic parish church. Its sixteenth-century masonry still exudes Islamic confidence.

Inside, the Turkish mihrab, facing Mecca, has been preserved. The entire building is full of surprises. The Jesuits installed a number of Baroque furnishings which sit unhappily under the remains of a dome constructed at the turn of the last century but removed in the late fifties to reveal a number of Turkish details.

As well as the parish church, the main square also offers a nineteenth¬-century Town Hall and a curious Baroque church whose facade seems to have enjoyed the attentions of some unknown nineteenth-century eclectic architect.

The north-western part of the square is taken up by the Nagy-Lajos grammar school, a competent collection of buildings mainly Baroque. Nearby is an equally pleasing Louis Seize palace housing an arch¬aeological museum containing remains of the 'Quinque Ecclesiae'. Both the Pannonia Hotel and the Nador guest house nearby will supply a refreshing cup of Turkish coffee or some no less pleasing 'Fiz' (mineral water).

The National Theatre

Past the Pannonia Hotel in Kossuth Lajos lit, near the square, are the National Theatre and the Baroque Lyceum church, which has a stuffy empire interior. Returning along one of the many narrow side streets to Szechenyi ter, the Janus Pannonius lit, named after a Hungarian Renaissance poet, leads from the north-western corner of the square to a part of the city which was once surrounded by fortified walls. Eventually this leads to the religious heart of the city, the Dom ter. The promenade, with its wooded paths and delightful old pavilion cafes, is a welcome shelter from the midday sun in the summer. Little seems to have changed here since the days before the First World War. Children play with hoops, cars are rare, and the ice cream is rich and sugary.

Suddenly, in the middle of the promenade, the trees part and a lawn leading to the cathedral opens up. There are several worthy buildings on the cathedral square, but our attention is immediately seized by the four¬towered cathedral which, like a ship at anchor, rests on the northern part of the square. The building's history is complex. The present sanctuary undercroft and the two sixty-metre-high western towers date from the eleventh century.

The undercroft reliefs and the two eastern towers, however, are from the twelfth century, though in appearance they are not dissimilar. Inside, the chapels in the north and south aisles are fourteenth-century, while the Gothic vaulting of the nave is supposed to date from the last years of the sixteenth. The so-called Szarhmary pulpit, with its Re¬naissance detailing, is from 1506. During the nineteenth century, the cathedral underwent a number of restorations, first in a Gothic style and then towards the end of the century in a Lombard Romanesque style.

The interior is high and spacious and rich in colours from the second of these nineteenth-century restorations.Opposite the cathedral is a collection of statues and a lapidarium with objects dating from the Roman period. On the western side of the square is the Bishop's Palace, which, though of medieval origins, was rebuilt in the Baroque style between 1780 and 1800. The fine Louis Seize archives palace to the east of the square dates from a decade later. By contrast, opposite the south-western tower of the cathedral stands a funerary chapel of the fourth century with stone mosaics from the third century. Adjoining the eastern obelisk in the square is an entrance to another curiosity, an early Christian painted burial vault, a rare thing outside Italy.

The city walls of Pecs Hungary

To the west of the cathedral stands the only surviving round stone bastion of the former city walls of Pecs. It has a battered drawbridge gate and insane crenellations. To the east stands the oldest house in the city, Kaptalan lit, constructed in the fourteenth century, but rebuilt several times since. Today it houses part of the art collection of the Janus Pannonius Museum as well as the Zsolnay collection of porcelain.

In the nearby Rakoczi lit stands one of the monuments to the city's oriental past, the Jakovali Hassan Mosque, the only Turkish building erected for religious purposes to have survived more or less intact. It has retained its very oriental minaret, which was usually the first feature of these buildings to be destroyed after the Turks had been routed. Its square hall is crowned by an octagonal dome, while the minaret above is dodecagonal in section, with iron railings on its balcony. The dark in¬terior, unspoilt by the Jesuits, still seems to whisper the Koran.

At the end of the promenade in front of the cathedral, a hill rises to the west on which a number of chapels marking the stations of the cross lead to a Calvary church, rather forlorn but none the less giving an impressive view of the old town.

Another hill to the north-west has the impressive funerary chapel of the Pasha Idris Baba, constructed in 1591. After the Turks were driven from Hungary, this octagonal building became first a Jesuit church and then a hospital chapel before being finally converted in 1961 into a museum of Mohammedan funeral customs. The original masonry is still almost entirely intact.

From here, several lanes lead to leafy paths which eventually wind their way up into more hills which offer plenty of opportunity for walking in the shade.

Excursions from Pecs Hungary In Cheap Car Hire

From Pecs, a short excursion can be made to the town of Moiiacs, which contains some notable buildings as well as, nearby, the battlefield on which in 1526 the Hungarian army was destroyed by the infidel. The memory of this sanguinary exchange still imparts a hint of sadness to what is otherwise a peaceful landscape. In Mohacs there are some fine Turkish baths and an eccentric memorial church pompously com¬memorating the 400th anniversary of the battle, erected in 1926.

Lake Balaton Hungary

The Danube here, is very wide and impressive. Between Pecs and the centre of Hungary is Central Europe's largest lake, Balaton. It is fifty-one miles long and two to nine miles wide, and abounds with fish. The south shore is flat, while that on the north side is bounded by a chain of hills and volcanic peaks which yield the esteemed Somlauer wine. Since the war the area has been extensively developed for tourism and bathing, so that at the height of the summer there is a holiday atmosphere rather reminiscent of the English south coast.

The road which runs along the southern shore is crossed by a series of smaller roads which lead to some picturesque villages. A railway line from Budapest follows a similar route to that of the main road and makes frequent halts. The first of these worth briefly exploring is Balatonszaboi, which contains several old churches, although of late tourist development has resulted in some of this village's charm being lost.

Siofok Hungary

About ten kilometres further along is the most important settlement on the southern shores: Siofok. As official Hungarian tourist guides proudly relate, SiOfok has the largest concentration of modern hotels on the lake. This does not sound promising, but the town is an old settlement which was first seriously developed as a resort in the late nineteenth century, so that there is still a feeling of 'last year in Marienbad' about it. A lot of building was done between the wars, which was Siofok's heyday as a renowned resort for the whole of Central Europe.

The town is divided into two halves by the railway. That towards the lake is dominated by the jetties and piers from which many of the lake's ships sail, for this is the centre of Balaton shipping and the headquarters of the half-dozen grey gunboats which make up what is proudly referred to as the Hungarian Navy. Despite their size, they are well armed. The long jetty here is a favoured promenade and leads to a rose garden, fragrant and informal.

There are dozens of picturesque villas, several of which provide private rooms (apply to the tourist office in Szabadsag ter). The half of the town on the other side of the railway line is notable for the Beszedes Jozsef Museum (signposted), which recaptures the atmosphere of the resort before the end of the Habsburg empire in an exhibition of photo¬graphs and furniture depicting the development of the lake. But of all this veranda wistaria, few traces remain.

From Siofok, a boat regularly plies across the lake to the northern shore resort of Balatonfiired, the oldest spa on the northern side. Balatonfiired is protected by a range of hills which not only give the town a picturesque setting but also prevent the climate becoming too hot in summer or too ravaged by cold winds in winter.

Places to see in Transylvania Romania

Romania has evolved into one of the most interesting places to visit in Europe. Boasting diverse and rich architecture and a colourful history, Transylvania in particular attracts visitors from all over the world.

From the piata Victorei, the str. Petru Groza, a broad avenue, returns
to the Liberty Square, from which on the left ascends the str. Uni¬versitatu which crosses the Avram str. to become the Bisericii Ortodoxe str. From the right of this runs a small road to the Botanical Gardens. The gardens were laid out in the nineteenth century as a gift to the town by Count Miko, a Hungarian nobleman.

It is still one of the richest and most charming gardens of its kind in Central Europe. The wide variety of trees are planted over a large area broken up by small ravines, not unlike the narrow chines to be found along the south coast of England. Rhododendrons and wooden bridges over streams reinforce the impression that this could be Bournemouth. Below stands a small but by no means uninteresting museum of botanical specimens.

Back down the str. Republici and left along the road is the large avenue dedicated to the 30th of December. No. 21 is the Ethnographic Museum which contains a selection of Transylvanian peasant costumes, guarded 'by a contingent of rather sleepy old women enjoying their knitting. It is symptomatic of the Romanian approach to tourism that surprise is the most common reaction to a request for a ticket.

Corvin str., on the left, in which is the birthplace of Matthias Corvinus
, once the most sacred of shrines in the days of the Austro¬Hungarian monarchy, leads to Savinesti str., which at the corner of Emil Zola str. houses a former Franciscan monastery. The monastery is still in the hands of a small community but that is only a shadow of the order which, during the eighteenth century, transformed the buildings into a wealthy Baroque foundation.

The Someul River Transylvania

The little canal of the Someul river runs to the left of the monastery towards the town park, at the end of which is the Hungarian opera house, a humble modern building which none the less offers the occasion¬al performance of a Puccini opera which given the resources available is surprisingly good.

The nearby Sport Hotel, despite its heavy architecture, is the most satisfactory place to have dinner before contemplating a visit to the least touched of the seven castles which make up the Saxon settlements in Transylvania, Sighioara (Schiissburg), some miles up the valley, on the road to Sibiu (Hermannstadt).

Schassburg Transylvania

Few places in Transylvania match Schassburg´s charm. Pic¬turesquely situated at the entrance to the Schaas valley, it has a sleepy calm which no other town in the region can match. Here, for the first time, it is possible to see Teuton faces, pale with flaxen hair, among the inhabitants. 'Griiss Gott' rings out more frequently than any other greeting, and the general lack of modern development in the town sug¬gests a world rooted firmly in the past.

From the station, a road leads to the upper town, which with its pinnacles and towers might have inspired The Prisoner of Zenda. The streets of the lower town are a mixture of two-storey nineteenth-century Ringstrasse and the odd inter-war building, while not far from the station is a sturdy Protestant church erected in a pattern-book Neo¬Gothic style in 1887.

Pleasant though all this is, it is the upper town that allows the visitor to appreciate the best of the place. The small square is the best starting point. From here, a winding path takes you under the first of a series of towers and past several rather quaint houses with courtyards dating from about the middle of the seventeenth century. The square at the end of this path contains a large Gothic church which on Sundays resounds to the music of Bach chorales sung in German. The con¬gregation consists invariably of the over-fifties, and the old ladies here could have come from any church in Austria or Germany.

Count Dracula Transylvania


Opposite the west end of the church is a pleasant inn with an upstairs
terrace. A plaque near the doorway boasts that this was the residence of a certain Vlad Dracul, and the square itself is supposed to have once been the site of this medieval tyrant's innumerable executions. Dracula, Prince Vlad V of Wallachia, lived from 1431 to 1476. There is no evidence that he was a vampire, but he was certainly cruel and at least one well known contemporary print depicts him rather nonchalantly eating a meal surrounded by his enemies, who have been impaled on pikes. He was a great warrior and leader and has despite his cruelty retained the honour and affection of the Romanians to this day. This building offers a glass of refreshing wine and is also a restaurant, so that strength can be found for the ascent of the beautiful clock tower, which is also a museum.

The museum contains several curious items dealing with the town's history, including maps, furniture and a collection of chemists' bottles. The view from the top of the tower is splendid, and there are the usual guidelines giving the directions of the world's capitals.

From the tower a number of attractive parallel streets ascend to a hill¬top church. Here there is also a seminary, housed in a rather institutional building, Neo-Gothic in spirit. But the chief object of interest is the fifteenth-century church. It is rarely open and a key must be applied for at the neighbouring seminary. Inside, there are a splendid set of choir stalls and an equally beautiful ciborium, all ascribed to the sons of Veit Stoss of Nuremberg. The atmosphere is Teutonic and contrasts with the warm southern landscape outside.

From here, a path leads through the cemetery where many Saxon names are to be found engraved on the tombstones down the hill through some woods.
If there is time and the weather is as it invariably seems to be here in summer warm and sunny, there is no better way to spend the afternoon than to walk along one of the small country roads to a Saxon village. Owing to petrol restrictions traffic is minimal, and the carts and horses which occasionally pass one by are easily outnumbered by the rather picturesque pedestrians who appear round every corner hurrying to the next village.

Meivdiasch Transylvania

On Sundays, many of the Saxon villages have a wedding at which the amount of colourful costume to be seen will satisfy the most ardent ethnographer. Meivdiasch (Media), a small fortified town ten miles from Schassburg, is a good example, as is Schass (Sarou), only five miles from the town, and Teufelsdorf, on the line to Kronstadt. On a clear day there are few hills which are as beautiful as those to be encountered during such walks and the colourfully decorated houses in these villages are a happy sight. The churches in the German-speaking villages are usually Protestant, and again the words of Luther and the strains of Bach can frequently be heard on Sundays.

Although there are unlikely to be many inns in the villages, the hos¬pitality of these people is unrivalled in Central Europe and schnapps, water, beer and bread will never be refused the traveller, especially if he is on foot. At weddings, a few words of German will guarantee a place at the subsequent banquet, a happy feast.

From Schassburg to Hermannstadt

From Schassburg, the road to Hermannstadt (Sibiu), or a train as far as Karlsburg, from where connections run to Hermannstadt, can be taken.
Karlsburg, or Alba lulia as it is called today in Romania, is an interesting place, although it lacks the picturesque charm of much of the other parts of Transylvania. The Apulum of the Romans, the town was once the residence of the princes of Transylvania, Gabor Bethlen and Gyorgy Rakoczi.

There is a curious museum of antiquities near the station, but the most picturesque and interesting part of the town is the citadel, built on an eminence commanding excellent views of the surrounding country¬side. The fine brick fortifications were constructed between 1716 and 1735 by the Emperor Charles VI and recall the wars between the Austrian empire and the Turks following the relief of Vienna in 1683.

The chief building of merit here is the cathedral of St Michael, built originally in the Romanesque style but substantially enlarged in the Gothic style by Hunyady Janos in 1443-4. The church contains the sarcophagi of Hunyady Janos (d.1456), his son Ladislaus, beheaded in Buda in 1457, and Queen Isabella (d.1556) and her son Sigismund (d.1571).

Adjoining the cathedral is the episcopal palace, designed in the eig~¬teenth century, while to the north there is a military academy bUIlt originally as a Protestant grammar school by Gabor Bethlen and later converted into the series of rather austere barracks to be seen today.

The church of the Jesuits nearby was converted in the nineteenth century into a gunpowder magazine. The view from the bastions, especially from the main arch, now bereft of the fine eighteenth-century coat of arms which once adorned it, but decorated by a modern communist obelisk, is not to be missed on a clear day as the land stretches flatly for
miles from here.

Back at the cathedral, a large late Baroque building nearby contains
the great library which once made up the Batthyaneum, founded by Bishop Batthyany in 1794. Admission is difficult, and sullen staff seem to be everywhere. But the books are beautifully bound. A couple of cafes nearby may tempt the thirsty, but apart from these there is little to prolong our stay in the fallen glories of the Roman Apulum.

Hermannstadt Transylvania Cheap Car hire for Airports

Beyond Karlsburg, the line traverses the plain which was once the scene of the bloody battle in which Hunyady Janos routed the Turks under Mezet Beg in 1442. To the left rise the iron-ore mountains of Transylvania. Eventually, after several long bends, both road and rail reach Hermannstadt, the former capital of Transylvania. The town is undoubtedly one of the most picturesque places in Transylvania, although it has far more bustle to it than Schassburg.

Pleasantly situated on a hill lying on the river Cibinul, the old town is entered from the station by following the road proudly named after General Magheru. This rises with rather dilapidated nineteenth-century houses to the right and left to the church of the Ursuline nuns. This is a Gothic structure erected according to local sources in the fifteenth century. The buttresses of the exterior certainly seem to date from this period but the rest of the exterior is Baroque. Inside, the hexagonal choir and Gothic vaulting have survived the rather lavish alterations of the eighteenth century.

Left down the str. Manegului is the Franciscan church, which also dates from the late fifteenth century. The north aisle facade again has impressive buttresses and Gothic windows. Inside, the altar and west fatyade were rebuilt in the Baroque period, but the sculpture of the Madonna with Child on the high altar is medieval.

Beyond this church lie the old fortifications, which can be examined by turning right along the str. Maternia. The wall, below which can be seen the river, was erected in the seventeenth century as a third ring of fortifications against the Turks. This brick wall has recently been restored, but it remains much as it must have been in previous centuries, while the towers further along seem to have survived successive res¬torations unharmed.

Places to go near Budapest

From Kecskemet, the Bugac Puszta, some twenty-nine miles south of the town, can be reached by bus or hire car from Budapest Airport. There is something rather more primitive about the Bugac puszta than the Hortobagy. Even before the Second World War, life was rather nomadic here and though vineyards and orchards have been planted since then, the landscape has retained much of its original character.

As long as it is not the height of the tourist season, a very pleasant meal with music can be had at the Bugac csarda. The nearby woods provide excellent cover for pheasant shooting and facilities are available on the presentation of a shot-gun licence and some advance notice (apply at tourist offices).

If, instead of visiting Szeged and Kecskemet, the traveller has returned to Debrecen, a short spell, if only a couple of days, should be spent in the northern more hilly part of the country. If this is the first objective after Budapest, the best way of reaching the area is to take a train to Eger or hire a car at Budapest Airport and explore at your own leisure.

The small village of Tokay, whose wines continue to enjoy the sobriquet 'King of wines, wine of kings', is still one of the least spoilt places in Hungary. No industry and relatively few new buildings have emerged to mar its simplicity and intimacy, and there are few villages in which an hour can be spent as profitably as here.

The settlement is entered near its river. Those arriving by train are met by a bus, which transfers passengers to the village centre. The village is well worth spending a night in, although accommodation is limited. There is a modern and not particularly attractive hotel near the river, but rooms in private houses are likely to be more attractive as well as cheaper.

These can be found on application to the hotel porter or the tourist office in the village square. If these requests prove fruitless, the best and, in the author's experience, most effective way of securing rooms is to stop some friendly old lady and ask in German for her advice. More often than not she will knock on the nearest door and persuade the owner to offer her rooms to the strangers.

If finding rooms is not particularly a problem, food, it must be said, is not as good as it is in the main cities, although the modern restaurant of the hotel has an attractive terrace overlooking the river. Occasionally the fish can be excellent, but otherwise it is advisable to concentrate on the real joy of the place, its wine.

The wine of Tokay Hungary

The glory of this wine, known as 'essence of Tokay' or 'essencia', is usually very difficult to obtain. It is sweet Tokay made from pressing of the finest grapes and matured for at least twelve years in a deep cellar, where a black spongy mould forms on the bottles and walls because of the moisture. Its purity and sweetness are unquestionable and indeed it lives up to its reputation of being capable of restoring a dying emperor.

Commoner than the essencia are the dry Tokays known as 'Szamorodni' and the sweet 'Aszubor', which is given a number of 'butts' on its bottle neck from one to six depending on the level of sweetness. Thus a 1980 Aszubor with six butts will be sweeter and richer than a 1976 with three butts. Most of the bottles to be seen for sale throughout Hungary come from the government's own consortium in the nearby village of Tolcsva. However, there are several private cellars in the region which allow tastings and possess some very fine Aszubor for modest prices. The most convenient of these is almost five minutes' walk away from the hotel.

Turning left then right from the hotel out of the village, there is a private cellar on the right where an aged lady will syphon the wine from the barrel with a long test-tube device.

The churches of Tokay Hungary

Along the main street, there is much of interest. As in many settle¬ments in this part of the world, there has long been a variety of religious activities here. There are Protestant, Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist churches, and down one road to the right the impressive if melancholy ruins of a synagogue.

Continuing along the main road past several pleasing doors of early nineteenth-century pattern on the left, we come to the main square, where the most visited church is situated on the left. It is a nineteenth¬ century affair with a rather austere character relieved by modern glass and a jolly congregation. Above it to the left is another church of some Protestant denomination, while below, continuing along the road, one passes another unidentifiable religious building with a lofty tower, though it is usually closed.

On the left of this principal village street, after walking for some minutes, is the museum of wine and wine-making, whose exhibits are displayed in the basement of an old house. Here there is an impressive array of machinery and earlier implements involved with the making of wine, as well as several charming old bottles of the Tokay wines made before the war, Many of these came from princely estates and bear the names of such famous aristocratic families of Hungary as Esterhazy and Szechenyi.

There are also several menus and posters dating from the time before the First World War, when the Tokay wine industry was launching an export drive in foreign countries, including England. Al¬though Voltaire commemorated the wine in a book and Haydn and Schubert are both said to have composed songs praising its great re¬storative qualities, it would seem that mass advertising was still necessary.

Ironically, this great wine was considered to possess such medicinal qualities that for many years of this century in Hungary the only way to procure the best wine was through a chemist's.

Tokay Boarding School Hungary

A little further on from the museum, a turning to the right leads down several picturesque streets which then lead back to the river and the hotel. Continuing further along the main road however, it may be of interest to reflect that one of communist Europe's few boarding schools is situated in the large and very school-like nineteenth-century building on the road. The British Council, always fond of arcane ventures, commendably supplies the school with an English native speaker. It is curiously reassuring to think that a few yards along these dusty roads, still used mainly by horses and carts, someone is instilling these young Magyars with a basic awareness of English literature. It is yet another example of the close connections Hungary enjoys with the Anglo-Saxon world.

Miskolc Hungary

Back in the village square, a small bar run by the government's Tokay wine consortium will offer a good glass of four-puttom (or butts) Aszubor.
From Tokay, a railway runs to Miskolc, the second largest city in the country, where much of the nation's industry is concentrated. Al¬though the city has several fine churches, it is not a place to spend a night. Cement and lime works as well as several iron industries make it a grey settlement, especially in winter.

The classical Calvinist church at the corner of Kossuth utca and Szechenyi utca is of interest, as is the Greek Orthodox church in the courtyard of Ferenc Deak ter 7, built between 1785 and 1806, which contains an exquisite iconostasis and some impressive choir stalls in the severe Zopf or Louis Seize style.

At the end of the Szechenyi utca is the 234-foot-high Avas hill, with its Calvinist church dating from the fourteenth century which has an interesting wooden ceiling and choir. The old streets on the hill contain about 800 wine cellars, for this is an area renowned for its red wines. The Hermann Otto Museum near the church above is rich in archae¬ological objects found while the limestone was being excavated. At the top of the hill is a squat modern lookout with a cafe commanding excellent views of the city when the smog lifts. If there is time, an excursion should perhaps be made to Diosgyor castle, a symmetrical series of fortifications dating from the fourteenth century. Having lost its strategic role, it was used as a hunting base for the country's kings and queens.

Eger Hungary

About one and a half miles from the village begins a romantic ravine (Hamorvolgy), watered by the brawling Garadna. From here a pic¬turesque road winds its way along the Biikka to Eger, one of the most interesting towns in the northern part of the country and a welcome change from the overdeveloped sprawl of Miskolc.

Eger is one of the oldest settlements in Hungary and the first King of Hungary, St Stephen, founded a bishopric here at the beginning of the eleventh century. The sixteenth-century bishops of Eger liked to build extensively, but the invasions of the Turks ended this. Luckily the fortress, which had been extended most capably after the first Mongol incursions in the thirteenth century, was able to withstand the initial attacks of the Turks in 1556. Captain Istvan Dobo, the commander of the garrison at this time, has been justly celebrated in several Hungarian poems and plays.Unfortunately, forty years later, the Turks were successful and the town was occupied for almost a century until 1687. Later, during the uprisings of Rakoczi against the Austrians, the fortress again had to be besieged.

The rest of the town is Baroque, with little sign of that rather heavy nineteenth-century architecture which is to be encountered in most towns of Central Europe. This must be partly the result of the town's isolation from the main railway lines across Hungary. Even today, it only has a branch line to the junction of Fiizesabony. The present town still bears signs of the rivalry between bishops and citizens which existed in the Baroque period, with the result that there are two centres in the town, one ecclesiastical and the other civic. The ecclesiastical centre is situated around the cathedral and Szabadzag Square and the centre of the merchants' town around Dobo Istvan ter.


Several of the rooms, including the library, have impressive ceilings painted in the eighteenth century and on the whole sympathetic¬ally restored. The building is one of the most important of its date in Hungary, and the library, with its medallions and wood carvings, is an excellent foil to the richness of the frescoes above, portraying the Council of Trent. The Lyceum provides a worthy overture to the other splendid buildings of Eger. Opposite stands the Neo-Classical cathedral, designed by Josef Hild, Hungary's leading empire architect, in the 1830S. The exterior, with its six Corinthian columns and dome, is one of the most striking facades in Hungary. The effete statues of saints along the monumental staircase ascending to the portico were executed by the Italian craftsman Marco Casagrande between 1833 and 1846. Casagrande is also responsible for the reliefs on the facade depicting Jesus in the Temple and the Pieta.

Through the portico another colonnade leads to the three aisles. Three domes mark the ceiling of the central aisle, rather as in Sant Antonio at the end of the Canale Grande in Trieste, designed by Hild's contemporary Peter von Nobile An octagonal chapel to the right of the principal altar contains a number of somewhat mediocre frescoes of the 1880s by Ferencs Szoldatics. The large marble cherubs guarding the high altar are again the work of Casagrande. All in all the atmosphere is curiously like that of many Neo-Classical churches in Italy. The paintings of the side altars, mainly the work of nineteenth-century Italian artists from Modena, reinforce this impression. The paintings in the south aisle are much earlier than the classical structure and are believed to have come from a previous church of the 1760s on this site.

Explore Hungary in comfort and style and hire a car from Budapest Airport. Car hire and car rentals can be pre-booked before you travel to save you time and money. Budapest is one of the world´s most beautiful cities, so take your time to explore the fascinating sights and sounds, and hire a car from Budapest Airport.

Things to see in Esztergom Hungary

From here, the Bajcsy Zsilinszky lit leads to the Balassi Balint Museum, a charming collection of paintings, furniture and other objects illustrating Esztergom's history. The same building also houses the cathedral library, which was established over 800 years ago and includes codices dating from the eleventh to sixteenth centuries.

Along the Bajcsy Zsilinszky lit is the Bath Hotel (Fiirdo Szallo), which will supply a refreshing bath or some coffee and cakes. The Bajcsy lit leads to the Rakoczi ter, which offers an eccentric ensemble of Baroque buildings and the Town Hall. The restaurant at the corner of the square and Zalka Mate is a good resting point before following the Vorosmarty lit (Madach ter, Galamb lit and Attila lit) to the Calvary church on Szent Tamas hill, a gentle rise at the back of the town, for a final glimpse of the Danube Bend before returning to the capital.

If you hire a car from Budapest Airport,there are two further places of interest nearby which could be knocked off in a couple of hours. Otherwise, there is little lost by setting out to visit them both at leisure on the following day.

Gyor Hungary

The first of these western excursions from Budapest involves a pic¬turesque town which, despite the establishment of several industries around it, still retains a pleasant Baroque centre. The second is a monastery which in size and atmosphere is unrivalled even by the great foundations of Tuscany. Gyor, or Raab as it is known to German speakers, lies eighty miles from Budapest almost exactly half-way between Vienna and the Hun¬garian capital and is a suitable jumping-off point for visiting Lake Balaton.

At first sight, Gyor is rather disappointing. The railway station is a reasonable essay in forties fascist, but the buildings opposite all seem to have been erected in the last ten years. One recovers hope, though, at a large imposing edifice to the right. Grey and white Neo-Baroque, it looks rather like another of Helmer and Fellner's opera houses. In fact, it is the Town Hall, and its size and tower show how important the town was in the nineteenth century.

Almost opposite, a number of parallel roads lead to the old town centre, which is a small square of Baroque and Rococo buildings. The yellow church is sophisticated Baroque in plan and was built by the Carmelites in the 1720S. Its stalls have the ball motif we have seen in Vienna. The rest of the square contains a number of other noteworthy houses of the same period.

From here can be seen the old fortifications of the town, which for several years withstood the Turks. The Alkotmany litca, a pedestrianized street, contains an interesting portal at No. 17. The nearby Szechenyi Square is dominated by the fading blues and whites of the Minorites church erected with great largesse in the 1750S.

The interior possesses some exquisite frescoes which have avoided the restorer's heavy hand. Opposite is a red building with a pleasantly tiled roof, housing a town museum. The Jedlik Anyos utca eventually reaches a Baroque statue marking a road rising towards the cathedral. (The Dunaetel bar just below this monument will provide a glass of refreshing beer before the ascent to this rather Mediterranean-style building.)

The church bears the marks of many styles. Its main entrance has Neo-Classical lotus-leaf columns inspired by Napoleon's Egyptian campaigns, and an even grander 1938 classical door. Inside (when closed, a friendly red-faced gentleman in a house opposite the south entrance will usually open the church up) there are some more frescoes in the nave, a Gothic side chapel of 1404 with Romanesque remains, and a thirteenth-century gold bust of St Ladislaus, one of the most valuable pieces of goldsmith's art in the country.

Gyor Cathedral Hungary

Near the cathedral is a modern but not too offensive hotel (at the time of writing, still to be named) and a Neo-Gothic seminary. The Bishop's Palace, or Abbot's House as it is sometimes referred to, is partly Gothic. A rank garden through the entrance arch offers views of Gyor island, and a small inscription on the garden wall commemorates the year 1809, when, following the only battle fought during the Napoleonic wars on Hungarian soil, the French emperor stayed at Gyor. The island itself can be reached from the square with the Carmelite church, but it offers little of interest except a dramatically ruined synagogue, a Russian barracks and some leafy promenades. Compared with the Hungarian capital, few of the eating establish¬ments here can match the best of Hungarian cuisine.

Pannonhalma Hungary

It is difficult to describe the elation this monastery, set high on the last spur of a range of hills, can evoke. In the spring, with bright blue skies, one might almost be in Tuscany. Only the train, usually packed with Russian soldiers as it approaches the village below, reminds one of the east, as the Neo-Classical facade of the Benedictine's richest establish-ment in Hungary seigneurially rises up over the valley.

The station lies about a mile from the monastery and as the sun sets the walk is suitably invigorating. The foundations of the abbey were laid in 995 by Prince Geza and the church was consecrated in the year 1001. The entrance is between the Neo-Classical wing designed by Josef Engal and Janos Albert Packh in the 1820S and a curious 1940S Italian school block, which adds even more to the Tuscan atmosphere. The main entrance is straight ahead. This opens into a large hall with a staircase-well supported by slender iron columns. Downstairs are some fading but beautiful portraits of Franz Josef and some Benedictine pupils, all with a strong hint of japonisme in the colours, something quite rare in Central Europe.

Up the stairs and towards the tower, however, is a Gothic cloister which in turn has a Romanesque entrance to the church for the monks and a humbler door for the congregation. Here, on a wall just before the entrance, are some of the architect's original elevations for the building, showing that only a part ofPackh's initial ambitious plans were executed, though what there is is splendid enough for a prince.

Inside the chapel, there broods a dark Gothic, refreshingly northern in atmosphere. In keeping with monastic practice, the church is built on three levels, one for the monks, another for the clergy and another for the laity. A crypt below the middle floor is partly Romanesque and partly Gothic. At precisely 19.05, vespers with Gregorian chants can be heard while those who are able to avail themselves of monastic hospitality can look forward to rising with the sun for Lauds at 5.45. These services, with their earnest closely cropped monks whose life-style is rather more austere than that enjoyed by the Benedictines in England, are solemn occasions, as moving as anything in the Romanesque abbeys of France.

A rather overgrown but none the less picturesque botanical garden drops down from behind the monastery while above, the spectacular Neo-Classical library boasts, in addition to a rather dashing statue of the Emperor Francis I, 30,000 volumes.

Pannonhalma is a severe if welcome oasis of calm scholarship. It is still a fee-paying boarding school – which was a remarkable achievement in any communist country and the terrace, with its incomparable views, is as good a place as any in which to contemplate a tour of the rest of Hungary.

Eastern Hungary from Budapest

From Budapest eastwards, the railway and motorway pass some of the flattest and dullest landscape in the world. The Great Central European plain, over which the Mongol hordes swarmed, is a lonely place which has played upon the imagination of travellers to Central Europe for centuries. The Puszta, as this plain is called, so excited the ingenuity of British intelligence during the last war that a plan was seriously considered whereby the 'Fortress Europe' of the Nazis would be set ablaze by a vast fire ignited here by thousands of balloons flown from England laden with incendiaries. Travelling across its seemingly interminable expanse, it seems at times that this would have been a suitable fate for so unexciting a landscape.

Its fifty thousand square kilometres once boasted a unique way of life, dominated by herdsmen who dressed in picturesque attire and looked after thousands of wild horses and cattle. Although, as can be seen in neighbouring Transylvania, this way of life is not completely extinct, to all intents and purposes it died in Hungary after the war, with the country's swift transition to a modern mechanized agricultural economy.

Debrecen Hungary Cheap Car hire for Airports

The best place from which to explore the plain, small villages being rare settlements on the Puszta are never more than a few houses is the interesting city of Debrecen (trains on the eastern railway take four hours from Budapest), whose name is syrtonymous with a delicious sausage known throughout Central Europe as a 'Debreziner'.

Debrecen has always played an important role in Hungary's history and has been a busy trading centre since the Middle Ages. With the establish¬ment of a Calvinist college in 1546, it became the heart of the Hungarian reformation. It was here that the Hungarian patriot Kossuth deposed the Habsburgs in the revolution of 1848. During the winter of 1944-5, Debrecen again became the capital of Hungary, as the last German units in the country were repulsed by the invading Soviet army.

Primarily an agricultural town, Debrecen has suffered a number of unfortunate planning decisions. The need to set up an 'industrial zone' has led to it becoming a far less picturesque place than it once was. Nevertheless, there is much to see, and the oldest parts of the town behind the main boulevards are a remarkably tranquil urban ensemble.

The centre of the inner town is the Voros Hadsereg utja which, in common with most cities of the plain, is as wide as a square. The early nineteenth-century Calvinist church, situated at the north end of the road, can rightly be called the heart of the city. Its yellow mass, with an interesting if rather severe Neo-Classical facade, is fifty-five metres long it is the largest Protestant church in Hungary. It was built to the designs of a military engineer by the name of Mihaly Pechy, but his original plans were adapted by Josef Tallherr, to whom the facade's Ionic order is attributed.
Inside, the three aisles emphasize the rather austere tenets of the Calvinist church. The chancel is the work of Samuel Kiss and the pulpit's elegant proportions were a humble if worthy setting from which to depose the century-old Habsburgs.

The Calvanist College Hungary

Kalvin ter, which adjoins the Voros avenue, is the site of the Calvinist college. This attractive building is also the work of the engineer Pechy, although the fine "interiors are attributed to Karoly Rabel, while the impressive library (apply to the director), constructed in 1827, is the work of a certain Josef Dohanyosi.

Once you have booked into a hotel for the night, it is time to explore the rest of the Voros Avenue. No. 29 is the so-called small Calvinist church, a curious building with a rather ugly tower, constructed in the 1870S over an already existing church of the 172os. The contrast inside is curious: sweets wrapped in dull paper. Nearby is the old County Hall, built in 1912, rich in Jugendstil motifs and afire with the glow of jazzy majolica. There are several taverns along this road which are worth exploring. At night, they are filled with a curious mixture of soldiery, mainly conscripts, and hardened wizened-looking men from the plain wearing jodhpurs and riding boots.

A left turn up Beke utca, past the lovely Baroque church of St Anna, leads to an older part of the town where few houses are above two storeys and crumbling brickwork and overgrown gardens make a pic¬turesque and tranquil scene. Unlike the main boulevards, which meet at right angles, the little streets here meander in a remarkable survival of pre-Baroque planning. Many of the gardens contain the melancholy remains of what were agricultural outhouses and, in some, chickens and other small animals are still kept. Lizt ut, behind the rather eclectic nineteenth-century theatre on Kossuth ut, is typical of these. From here the Var ut returns to the Kalvin Square. To the west of the college, which houses a small museum of eccles¬iastical art, is the more interesting Deri Museum in Deri ter, which has a collection of modern Hungarian art.

Churches and places to visit in Budapest

The overall impression of the Gothic church in Budapest is unmistakably Victorian. We enter by a door in the south-western wall which leads down into a heavily and romantically stencilled nave. The walls bear the Corvin motif of the raven in whose beak rests a ring, a reference to the tale of how the young Matthias realized his vocation when a raven bearing a ring disturbed his reverie in a forest. The spiral west windows are remarkable.

The presence of so many Corvin crests and the church's name are explained by the fact that he was married here in 1463. The southern porch contains several plastered coloured decorations, while the murals depict the lives of Hungarian saints. The northern aisle has a series of chapels, that nearest to the chancel containing the impressive sarcophagi of Bela III and his wife Anne of Chatillon, which were brought here from Szekesfehervar.

The former crypt has been converted into a lapidary museum, while the gallery of the church contains a collection of ecclesiastical art with several notable jewelled chalices. The noble south tower is also adorned by a fourteenth-century relief depicting the Virgin Mary's death.

Trinity Square Budapest

The Trinity Square outside the west end is essentially a creation of Baroque times. Opposite stands the old Town Hall, now a scientific establishment. The statue at its corner is of Pallas Athene holding the Buda escutcheon. The Trinity Column at the square's centre, like those at the centre of Vienna, commemorates the deliverance of the city's inhabitants from plague in the eighteenth century. Damaged in the Second World War, it was restored only in 1968. The rather ugly Neo¬Gothic building to the north of the statue is the former Ministry of Finance, converted now into a student hostel.

It is impossible to ignore, however much one would wish, the astonish¬ing structure which stands just beyond the Matthias church on the Hess Andras ter. At first sight• it seems as if a temporary set for a Magyar version of Star Wars has been grafted onto this most venerable part of the Hungarian capital. A medieval tower is crowned by a late twentieth¬ century imitation ballistic missile. An imposing eighteenth-century monastery with a fayade adorned by friezes and pilasters has been filled with orange windows, most of which appear from the outside to be impossible to open. An unedifying but in contrast almost self-effacing sign announces this building to be the Budapest Hilton.

Architectural historians, students of the Central European political situation, to say nothing of any hard-line communists who may be around, are to this day mystified as to how it was possible to construct such a striking example of the worst excesses of the capitalist economy in the very heart of a communist capital. It may be that there was simply nowhere else to put the Hilton, and certainly its ancient shell makes it comparatively inoffensive in comparison with most establishments of its type. None the less, no one who ever knew Buda before the Hilton will admit that this part of it is ever likely to be quite the same again. Inside, the spaces are rather more impressive, and no one should miss the dramatic view of the Parliament through the ruins of what was a monastery chapel. Performances of operas here during the summer vary enormously in quality but the sight of the hot summer sky turning into a star-filled backdrop to the strains of Mozart can be quite magical.

From the hotel the short Szentharomsag utca (Trinity Road) leads to an interior which has remained untouched since 1827 NO.7, the Ruszwurm Cafe, which, besides containing some of the most delightful empire furnishings, offers excellent cakes in its cramped, invariably overfilled, low-ceilinged rooms.

The Szentharomsag utca leads to the western end of the castle hill, where there is a view over the hills towards Austria. Until 1878, these hills were rich in vines, but phylloxera destroyed them and they are now the garden suburbs of Buda.

The Museum of Catering Budapest

Between here and the Hilton is the Fortuna utca, which contains the uninspiringly named but nevertheless charming Museum of Catering. Of all the museums in Budapest, this more than any other gives an impression of what it was like to enjoy Hungarian hospitality in the nineteenth century. It consists of several rooms each designed to simulate the entrance hall of a Budapest hotel from Biedermeier times onwards. Proceeding from one room to another is to discover not only the traditions of a world-famous cuisine but also to glimpse something of the opulence which accompanied travel in this part of Europe before the First World War.

Menus boasting 1889 champagne and Tokay of even earlier vintage recall a time when Budapest was an essential part of the aristocracy's playground. Many of the menus contain English names and date from a time when nearly every important hotel bore a name like Queen of England, Prince of Wales or Victoria. Even after the First World War, the best way to acquire a fashionable clientele was to name an establish¬ment after a member of the British royal family. An elegant cheque book of the 1920s is a curious exhibit for a communist country.

The museum's chief glories are its changing exhibitions, which draw on a vast amount of stored material, including mouth-watering photo¬graphs of the Magyar chef's art. One particularly interesting room contains a fascinating reconstruction of a nineteenth-century shop. Others evoke a world of elegance which the Hungarians remain justly proud of, retaining in their speech such anachronisms as 'Kizet cokolom' (pronounced 'chocolom'), which means 'I kiss your hand' and is easily the most heard greeting in the country.

On the right of the catering museum runs the Orszaghiz utc. Left through the Darda utca, with its remains of the old bastion walls, is the Uri utca, almost every house of which contains an interesting fayade. To the right, across the square at the end of the Uri ut, are the Baroque houses of the Tancsics Mihaly ut. The house at NO.7 was built from the remains of several medieval houses and in 1800 witnessed a brief visit ¬so a plaque recalls from that itinerant musician Beethoven. NO.9, a rather more empire affair, was used in the first half of the nineteenth century as the royal archives and once housed the Hungarian mint.

Back in Kapisztnin ter, standing rather neglected, is the solitary tower of the church of Mary Magdalene, which was the second most important church in Buda and was all but destroyed in the Second World War. From here, the bastions lead to the War Museum, guarded by numerous rusting cannon. It concentrates on the Hungarians' heroic struggle against the Austrians and Russians in 1848, and is rather biased against the former. Many of the cabinets are filled with brightly coloured hussar uniforms, reminding one that all hussar regiments formed in the nineteenth century were originally inspired by the dash and elan of Hungarian cavalry. There are several mementoes belonging to the dozen Hungarian generals who were subsequently executed for their part in the uprising. Whatever one's attitude to war, there is no doubt that this small museum offers a unique insight into the essential romanticism of the Magyar character.

Further down along the bastion to the right is an arch beckoning us down towards the river. The square nearby, Becsi Kapu, contains several exquisite stucco favades, recently restored in a rather jolly shade of green. These may tempt one to ignore the arch and continue exploring the castle district.

Old Budapest

The medieval cellars of the Fortuna restaurant on the Hess Square (near the Hilton) may supply an agreeable lunch before the descent to the newer quarters of Buda. Going from the arch near the War Museum down along the gas-lit path on the right is probably the most picturesque way of accomplishing this. Deserted villas, overgrown gardens and other melancholy signs of neglect can be seen on all sides.

Whether you take the tempting cross-paths to our right or continue down along the steps, eventually we shall reach the main thoroughfare of Buda. This is by no means the most attractive street in Buda, but by turning left along it and continuing for some minutes we shall come to the Turkish domed mosque-like building which is the Kiraly baths.

The Budapest Baths

There are many baths in Budapest, the city's waters having been written about since Celtic times. The Romans called their settlement near here Aquincum precisely because of the rich abundance of thermal springs.

In the Middle Ages, hospitals were established near the medicinal springs, with the result that today many of them are still part of large complexes devoted to hydropathic therapy. The fashion for cures in the nineteenth century led to the construction of several rather imposing baths both in Pest and in Buda, but however inspiring the art-nouveau decoration of baths like the Gellert, further along the Buda side of the Danube, there is nothing more evocative of the ancient tradition of taking the waters than the Turkish structures which remain here.

Of these, the Kiraly is easily the most intimate and charming. Its pleasures of course can be enjoyed only by men, emancipation being sadly almost unheard of in certain walks of Hungarian life. (Ladies should not be too disheartened by this, for other baths such as the Gellert and the Czaszar baths cater for both sexes on most days or have an arrangement whereby men and women alternate.) In the best of them, and certainly in the Kiraly, it is possible to spend an essentially lazy hour contemplating between dark medieval masonry a coloured glass ceiling over six centuries old, partly obscured from time to time by clouds of steam rising from the waters. The Kiraly, in common with nearly all the older baths, are built on artesian wells where water comes from a great depth and is rich in dissolved radioactive salts of considerable curative power.

It has been estimated that sixteen million gallons of medicinal water stream out daily from 117 thermal springs on both sides of the Danube. Those who have never been in any way devotees of saunas and other similar experiences will be converted by a couple of hours at one of these establishments. As well as restoring one's strength, they offer a unique insight into the way in which Budapest society is organized. Like the coffee-houses of Vienna, the baths are places for regular meetings, informal discussions and a general gathering of news. Not for nothing is there a legend that the instigators of Hungary's 1956 uprising were intellectuals who plotted the entire affair in the city's baths. Those who have lived in Budapest for some time are convinced that there is a bath for almost every profession in the city. On the other hand, the bath culture would seem to be on the decline in Budapest, as more and more young people turn to 'western' ways of amusing themselves during the day and visit bars.


A few steps further on from the Batthyany ter is another picturesque square, Corvin ter. The church here is not of great interest, though it has a pleasant interior. To the right under a rather impressive portal is one of the very best second-hand bookshops in Hungary, discreetly masked by the facade of what seems to be a nineteenth-century house imitating an eighteenth-century palace.

From Corvin ter, the possibilities are legion. IfBuda has captured the imagination, another picturesque path will return one to the castle for tea at Ruszwurm or dinner at the Fortuna or the Hilton, whose restaurant it must be said is entirely Hungarian in character. Otherwise the underground from Batthyany ter takes one back to the bustle of Pest and another evening in the Carpathia or the Hundred Years.

What to see at the Budapest Museum Hungary

Among the incredible displays and exhibitions at the Budapest Museum, Hungary, there are some dramatically displayed pieces of armour and a heavy sword given to King Wenceslas by Pope Julius II. The child's suit of armour belong¬ing to the infant Louis II is an impressive example of craftsmanship in metal, while some miniature pistols in a case nearby are reputed to have belonged to Jan Sobieski during the relief of the siege of Vienna in the same room is a set of magnificent stalls taken from the ruined church of Nyirbitor and a funerary monument dated 1635 depicting 'a knight who led a pious life during tumultuous times'. Beyond this is the bright Maria Theresa room, with the dashing uniform her son wore as a child in 1745.

The Biedermeier Room

The Biedermeier room is full of curiosities, such as a funereal-black obelisked piano and a fine painting of the opening of the magnificent Chain Bridge in the 1840S The Clark brothers, who were the engineers responsible for the bridge, strike a suitably Scottish note of sobriety in their civilian dress against the glitter of the brightly uniformed Hungarians.Right of the museum is Brody Sindor lit, a road of peculiarly Pestian charms. NO.4 has some fine frescoes dating from the end of the nine¬teenth century on the facade, while No. 6 has an impressively dark entrance hall. But it is No. 14 which reflects best the architecture of a nineteenth-century capital anxious to employ up-to-date materials. Here in the courtyard is a dramatic space boasting three classical orders beautifully rendered in iron.

Further along the road, No. 30 contains the Hary Borozo tavern, an unpretentious restaurant with reasonable food and good wine. Until a year ago, this establishment boasted the services of a gipsy violinist of the old school, with a penetrating gaze and superb musicianship. There were no tawdry costumes or bullying for requests and tips, just a discreet bow followed by the slow raising of his professorial drawn features. But even without him, this is a comfortable haunt.

Turning left along Puskin ut, there are more interesting houses. To the left of Rakoczi ut, a large boulevard, is the Muzeum korut. At the corner here is the old-fashioned Hotel Astoria with a pleasant cafe, while near it at Muzeum korut 13 is another of the city's many fine second-hand bookshops. In the nineteenth century, Budapest was a well-known centre of the book-trade in Central Europe and it still boasts many establishments which have valuable German and English books for a fraction of what they would cost in the west.

From the Astoria, the Tanacs korut passes the brick synagogue, designed partly by the distinguished Vienna architect Otto Wagner in the 1860s. In appearance, it is not unlike the equally picturesque brick Greek Orthodox church in Vienna's Fleischmarkt.

Left down the Barczy ut is the large Baroque Town Hall, originally a hospital for army invalids and designed in the late eighteenth century in a rather barrack-like style by A. E. Martinelli. Further along the Tanacs ut are two rather more interesting buildings.

The first is the Lutheran church on Deak ter, a Neo-Classical building of simple proportions designed by Mihaly Pollack between 1799 and 1809.

St Stephens Cathedral Budapest

The second is the much more overpowering St Stephen's cathedral, which rises above along the Bajcsy Zsilinszky ut, an imposing Neo-¬Renaissance structure, heavy and not particularly beautiful. Its size it has a floor area of 5,000 square metres makes it one of the largest ecclesiastical buildings in Eastern Europe, but one feels that the Hun¬garians have never really taken to it. It was designed by two distinguished Hungarian architects, Ybl and Hild, in the middle of the last century, but its construction took over fifty years, giving the entire edifice a rather unhappy history. Few buildings of such size offer quite as great a sense of anti-climax as the interior, part of which is painted in nursery colours.

Withdrawing up along the great avenue unpronounceably called Nepkoztarsasag, there is a chance to admire a more successful example of Ybl's work in the Opera, which was restored in 1984 to all its mag¬nificent former glory. Unlike the Vienna State Opera, which was restored in the fifties, when it seemed fashionable to give such an interior an up-to-date appearance, the Budapest house has been ren¬ovated true to its original style, with mirrors, varnished wood and a buffet full of intimate alcoves to sit in. At present tickets are difficult to obtain, so great is the Magyar's passion for opera.

Further up the avenue from the Opera is the most renowned cafe in the country, the Cafe/Restaurant Hungaria, a fabulous art-nouveau creation originally called the Cafe New York, a name which, in view of its brashness, would still suit it. Lunch is often excellent here, but dinner, where quite often the cuisine seems to take second place to an elaborate cabaret, can be disappointing. A simple coffee and cake is perhaps the easiest way of enjoying these novel surroundings, which evoke an atmosphere faintly reminiscent of that once enjoyed in London's Cafe Royal.

From the crossroads of the avenue with the square named November 7 ter, the underground line will take us to Hosok ter and the city park. The underground itself is of some interest, being the oldest on the continent. The line leading to the park from Vorosmarty ter, our initial point of departure, still contains its original mid-nineteenth-century detailing, but most of the other lines have more recent origins and are modelled on the flashy abstract Russian example.

Heroes Square Budapest

Hosok, or Heroes Square, is dominated by the Museum of Fine Arts to the north and the equally Neo-Classical Artists' House on the southern side. Between these distinguished classical structures rises the Millenary Monument, erected at the turn of the century to commemorate the Kingdom of Hungary's survival into the new century, and the thousandth anniversary of the Magyar conquest. Many others were built throughout Hungary's part of the empire, and though those which would now rest on Czech or Slovak soil have been demolished, there are several still to be found in Hungary.

Designed by Albert Schickedanz in 1896, its colonnade is an elegant backdrop for an extravagant equestrian statue of Prince Arpad, the first leader of the Magyar tribes who led them in their conquest of the flat plain beyond the Carpathians. It was his great-grandson Stephen who was canonized later for introducing the country to Christianity. In front of Arpad stand some seven chieftains of the Magyar tribes who swore to follow him, while on both sides of this tableau stand various other figures of historical importance in Magyar history. A more modera monument commemorating Hungarian dead in the last two wars stands in the middle of the square.

The Museum of Fine Arts Budapest

All this can be taken in at a glance. What is perhaps important now is to visit the Museum of Fine Arts. The gallery is well-stocked with Italian Renaissance paintings, although there is nothing here to compare with the best works in the Kunst¬historisches in Vienna. None the less, admirers of Raphael should not miss the Esterhazy Madonna or his portrait of a young man. There is also a fine portrait of Caterina Cornaro by Bellini and a large portrait of St James by Tiepolo as well as several Titians and Tintorettos. Those who are interested in the Dutch school will enjoy the Cruci¬fixion by Memling or Van Dyck's double portrait. One room, indicative of the sympathy felt by the Hungarians towards the British, contains a fine series of portraits by Reynolds and Gainsborough. These and a smaller collection in Transylvania would appear to rep¬resent the only serious interest Central Europe felt for the work of British painters.

Modern painting is modestly represented by the works of Monet, Renoir and Cezanne, while a modern sculpture gallery contains some interesting work of the great Jugoslav sculptor Mestrovic. Several other rooms are devoted to classical and Renaissance sculpture, and the drawings collection is particularly rich in Renaissance work.

If refreshment is needed before visiting the Artists' Exhibition Hall on the opposite side of the square, the Restaurant Gundel behind the gallery on the edge of the park will offer a hearty lunch, a rather formally served dinner or the Hungarian equivalent of high tea: chocolate, nut and cream pancakes, washed down with a bottle of sweet medicinal Tokay. The pancakes are called 'palacsinta' ('Palatschinken') and make a fitting climax to any Hungarian dinner if they have not already been eaten earlier in the day.

At the Artists' Hall there are usually exhibitions of Hungarian con-temporary art or the ubiquitous travelling exhibition of English water-colours arranged by the British Council. The park which stretches away from here is pleasant to stroll in. There are several imposing bathing establishments constructed in the grand style fashionable in the early years of this century, but the most interesting building is a sham Transylvanian castle, a perpetual reminder to the Hungarians of their lost province, which though never exclusively popula¬ted by Magyars is none the less their spiritual homeland and the birthplace of their finest romantic poet, Petofi. This picturesque folly, with its grand courtyards, now houses an agricultural museum which contains a wide range of implements formerly used on the large Magyar estates.

As the building is itself of such architectural interest, a half-hour spent wandering between the nineteenth-century forerunners of the combine harvester and other farming memorabilia is quite rewarding.

The Transport Museum in Budapest

Some fifteen minutes' stroll across the park is the less pretentious Transport Museum, with Hungary's contribution to the development of rail, road, sea and air transport.

A taxi hailed by the quaintly dressed doorman of the Gundel restaurant will take us most comfortably and easily to the last great museum in Pest, the Museum of Applied Arts on the Olloi ut,a long boulevard to the south. Unfortunately situated for any of the traditional sights of the city, the museum is however an essential part of any itinerary which attempts to capture the best of Hungarian art.

As in most places in Central Europe, the fashion for art-nouveau ran riot in the years before the end of the last century. The Applied Arts Museum, designed by the highly gifted but eccentric Odon Lechner in the 1890s, attempts a peculiarly Hungarian brand of this style, completely different from anything happening at the same time in Vienna, or for that matter in Paris or Brussels. Its pyrogranite roof tiles and extravagant use of terra cotta, glazed in the manner of English arts and crafts arch¬itects such as Halsey Ricardo, distinguish the building immediately. The white interior, relying for effect on the curved lines which seem essential to Lechner's style, is the perfect setting for the wide range of Jugendstil objects which at the time of writing are being installed in the recently restored interior.

From O1l6i lit, a metro line runs to Kalvin ter and thence to the Parliament, which is the last building of significance to be examined in Pest before crossing the Danube to explore Buda. The tube station to aim for is Kossuth Lajos ter, named after the Hungarian patriot of the 1848 revolution, Kossuth, whose exploits so impressed the British public that he enjoyed a comfortable exile for some months on the fringes of Holland Park.

Things to do in Semmering and Graz

In Semmering, Austria, new life has been breathed into one of the oldest hotels, the Pannhans. Much of the decor is almost a parody of Alpine art-deco, but it still has something of the atmosphere of pre-war Semmering, although it rarely seems more than a tenth full. Over the Semmering lies Styria, and Graz, the second largest city in Austria and with Salzburg the most enjoyable of the provincial Austrian capitals.

The station and its immediate environs were bombed during the war and were rebuilt with little inspiration, but the Annenstrasse soon leads to the small dolomite plug which is the Schlossberg, around which huddles the largest concentration of Baroque architecture in Austria.

Crossing the rather muddy-looking river Mur, you will soon reach the Herrengasse and the Hauptplatz. Because of the city's proximity to the Adriatic it is barely three hours away in a fast car several Italian artists have left their mark on the architecture of the city. Its Baroque and later art-nouveau buildings have a lightness and modest scale com-pletely remote from that encountered in Vienna. The soft colours, yellows and greens, with white stucco work combine with the shutters guarding each window from the fierce southern sun to give Graz an atmosphere faintly Balkan in its indolence.

From the Herrengasse runs the narrow Sporgasse, with its cobbled surface, sensibly pedestrianized. Past the magnificent wooden facade of the Edegger bakery is the Biedermeier Franzensplatz with its statue of the Emperor Francis, while beyond lies the Gothic cathedral. Its interior, inevitably Baroque, was recently restored, revealing traces of several giant medieval frescoes at the west end. The best way to fully explore the sights of Austria is to pre-book a hire car at Vienna Airport.

Opposite the cathedral the remains of the castle have little of interest but we should go under the arch to examine the remarkable fifteenth century double spiral staircase, which is one of the chief architectural glories of the city. The arch to its right leads to the magnificent Stadt¬park, and at the back of the cathedral stands the picturesque mausoleum, whose architecture is the clearest expression of the value Graz once had in Central Europe. Built by the emperor Ferdinand II in 1614, this remarkable Mannerist building with its gazing putti, broken pediments and romantic campanile was designed by Pietro da Pomis. The interior decoration is the work of Fischer von Erlach the elder, who was born in Graz.

Graz the seat of the Habsburgs

From 1564 to 1619, Graz was the seat of a branch of the Habsburgs, who made the town the administrative centre of Inner Austria. The mausoleum, as Austria's oldest early Baroque building of note, is a fitting testament to this. Ferdinand II, who is buried with his wife Anna Maria in the mausoleum, was a highly complex personality. Sometimes called the begetter of the Thirty Years War, he was a fervent Catholic whose Jesuit upbringing made him a zealous opponent of Protestantism. Under his leadership, Catholic Austria crushed the flower of Protestant nobility at the battle of the White Mountain near Prague, so obliterating Bohemian culture for more than two hundred years.

The Stadtpark Austria

The Stadtpark was formerly the fortifications of the city, its layout as an 'English garden' dating from the second decade of the nineteenth century. The fortifications which had proved so formidable against the Turk even defended the city against an army of Napoleon three times larger than the defenders. Vienna's capitulation in 1809 resulted in the Napoleon demanding, as a condition of peace, the demolition of Graz's defences. The result is not only the delightful park but, at the summit of the Schlossberg, a veritable garden in the air. The view from the Schlossberg reveals the long grey Italianate university buildings beyond the park, followed by the green Leechwald woods with the yellow Baroque Maria Trost church on a rise in the distance beyond.

To the south, the hills become gentler, while west and north rise the last peaks of the eastern Alps. The Schlossberg itself is full of delightful architectural devices scattered about its gas lit paths. At the summit rises a Belvedere, while on the principal path below stands the one part of the fortifications which the people of Graz, by contributing their personal fortunes, managed to save from Napoleon's demolition men, the clock tower, now the symbol of Graz.

The Sackstrasse Austria

At the foot of the Schlossbergstiege, steps built this century by Russian prisoners of war, is the Sackstrasse (dominated by the severe Baroque Palais Attems) and the entrance to what proclaims itself to be Europe's largest 'grotto' railway two miles of track piercing the Schlossberg through dark and mysterious caverns. Despite the Noddy Land adver¬tising, the thin rails have a rather sinister character which is not dispelled by the hunchback driver who shouts out in incomprehensible Styrian dialect the names of the illuminated scenes which rush by.

The train rattles past the polystyrene debris of various Nuremberg-style toy houses. Terrifying dwarfs clamber out of giant boots. Witches, evil stepmothers and wolves, all rather uncomfortably realistic in their doll-like shapes, provoke a chill which the hastily issued blankets are unable to combat. Several of the tableaux have still to be completed and their darkened silhouettes only add to the impression that, by accident or design, in the heart of Graz's fortifications some Styrian civil servants have created a most ingenious and frightening ghost-train.

Back to the Hauptplatz, where numerous cafes ply their trade - the most fashionable at present is the small Cafe Mur beyond the tram stops.
From here, the Herrengasse (with fine frescoes at NO.5) leads to the Landhaus on the right, with a delightful Renaissance courtyard erected by Domenico dell' Allio. A notice on its facade dating from the 1580s cautions us against drawing our breadknives.

An interesting door within this courtyard leads to the impressive arsenal, where armour was stored in preparation for Turkish sieges in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is the largest collection of its kind in Central Europe and contains over 30,000 implements of war. Unlike similar collections in other European cities, this is an arsenal rather than a museum. The visitor wanders through rooms of halberds, swords and shields, stacked for easy use rather than inspection.

Places to visit in Graz

Between the Herrengasse and the cathedral runs a series of narrow streets all of which repay a quick reconnaissance. The Glockenspielplatz has an art-nouveau facade with a mechanical clock chiming the hour to a folk-tune. A fitting conclusion to the visit is to wander across the park to Laufke, on the Elisabethstrasse, for lunch or dinner. Finding somewhere reason¬able to stay in Graz is less easy than finding a good place to eat. The days when the Erzherzog Johann was the smartest hotel in Styria are long past. The newer Schlossberg Hotel at the end of the Sackstrasse is, if expensive, the only really personal and comfortable establishment in the city and we shall awake in the sixteenth-century rooms refreshed with the sun pouring through Biedermeier windows and the waters of the Mur below.

Budget airlines now fly into Vienna, and you can make the most of your stay by pre-booking airport car hire at Vienna or any other airport in Austria. Car hire provides an economical and comfortable way to explore Vienna and all the other cities in Austria which offer visitors some of the most fascinating sights in Europe.

The Mountain of Heroes and places to go in Austria

From Burg Kreuzenstein, a short drive north-east takes us to another nineteenth-century folly, the Heldenberg ('Mountain of Heroes'). This is truly Austria's Valhalla, a unique collection of over a hundred tin busts of the great Austrian, Irish, German, French and even Ser¬bian generals who served the Habsburgs in the stormy years 1848-9, when the empire was threatened from all sides by revolutionaries.

This bizarre monument owes its creation to the memory of Field ¬Marshal Radetsky who, though in his eighties, was wheeled out to deal with the emergency in Italy, defeating armies twice the size of his own by skilful manoeuvring and brilliant tactics. A man of extravagant tastes in his private life, reflecting the hedonism of a true soldier, Radetsky ran up debts of thousands of crowns. Freiherr Joseph von Parkfrieder, a tin merchant who had made his fortune supplying this material to the Austrian court, admired the marshal so much that he promised to pay all his debts if Radetsky, when he died, allowed Parkfrieder to bury his body on a hill celebrating the Austrian empire's feats of arms. Radetsky agreed, as did another general, Wimpfen, who had served as Archduke Karl's chief of staff at the battle of Aspern). Around these Parkfrieder proceeded to erect busts of every 'distinguished' general, officer and, when these ran out, private in the Austrian army.

The effect is impressive if grotesque. The four life size tin knights in armour who guard what is now a home for war injured are perhaps the most guilty offenders, although the ever-enchanted metal virgins who mark the path to Radetsky's tomb run them a close second. The tomb itself is remarkable for its errors of dates (Aspern 1805, for example) but none the less suitably severe. In Biedermeier writing above the steps, a notice warns that just 'because we are silent, it does not mean we are dead', a final salvo from the octogenarian marshal sufficient to inhibit anyone thinking of carving their initials on the wall. It is ironic that among the decorations displayed here are Radetsky's Russian medals awarded to him in the Napoleonic wars by the Tsar. Russian troops were so impressed by these when they invaded Austria in 1945 that no damage was done to any of this bizarre statuary.

The Wachau Austria

The road winds down to the Danube where, following the signs to Krems it soon reaches the beginning of the Wachau, the name given to the part of the Danube valley which lies between Melk and Krems, a stretch of about twenty miles. No other river landscape in Europe can equal the Wachau for charm, beauty, art and architectural treasures. Almost every crest is crowned with some glittering abbey or castle, whIle the small villages along the banks of the Danube below are equally rich in medieval houses and churches.

Krems is typical of these. An old wine town mentioned as early as 955 as a 'Reichsfeste' ('stronghold of the realm'), it is full of narrow streets with arcades which give the town a faintly north Italian air.

Near the Parish church of St Veit, designed by Biasino in 1620, there are a number of medieval houses, including one which boasts a fine Teutonic 'Erker' corner window and which now serves as the Town Hall (Rathaus). From the main square, steps lead up to the oldest church in the town, the Piaristenkirche, a late Gothic building of about 1520 with a light high interior.

The stalls, with their wooden ball decoration, seem to be related to those executed for the church of the Dominicans in Vienna and may even be by the same hand. Unfortunately, with evel y visit there seem to be fewer of these eccentric devices left. The view from the church on a clear day is extensive. Opposite rise the rather oriental onion-domed towers of the enormous abbey at Gottweig, while below the Danube winds its way between dramatic cliffs towards Diirntein. Descending to the right we come to a small square (Taglicher Markt) with several early seventeenth-century houses (Nos. 2 and 5 are even earlier) and a quiet bar with reasonable food. Down to the left, there are more sophisticated restaurants in the Hoher Markt, a square which has in its north-east corner the plain fac;ade of the Institut der Englischen Fraulein.

Austria Cheap Car hire for Airports

Between 1 April and 1 November it is possible to cycle along the long narrow street which links Krems with its neighbour, Stein, thanks to the convenient custom of the Austrian railways whereby cycles are avail¬able for hire at every railway station. Booked in advance (one week's notice is advised), the bicycle can be collected at Krems and left at Melk station after the ride, from where it will be returned to Krems at no extra cost.

Otherwise, the walk from Krems to Stein is no less enjoyable. On each side there are houses which will absorb any architectural historian and the long straight road which leads to the arch of the town gate is no less well endowed with places to sit and drink a glass of refreshing Wachau Veltliner.

On the left, along the Danube, are several pleasing squares, while on the right lie a number of churches which are now museums. The most interesting of these is the town museum, housed in the thirteenth¬ century Dominican church, on the Theaterplatz, where former cloisters house a wine museum.

Under the Kremser Tor or gate is Stein, which if anything is even more unspoilt and picturesque than Krems. The parish church of St Nicholas and its rectory have elaborate Baroque stucco work. Steps lead up to the Frauenbergkirche, an early Gothic fourteenth-century church with a fine view. Descending to the right, there are several private wine cellars where it is possible to taste and buy some of the region's renowned white wines, which are a welcome contrast to the more acidic wines offered in Vienna. Down in the Landstrasse are several more picturesque houses, of which the former toll house at No. 135, with its alcove and rich Re¬naissance decorations, is perhaps the finest.

The people of Stein are rightly proud of their town's heritage and it is possible to detect certain contempt for the inhabitants of the nearby capital city. Despite the yearly invasion of tourists, the visitor will find these Wachau people a kind and hospitable folk who will go to enormous lengths to help and guide one through this beautiful part of the country.

From Stein, a cycling road rises up to Diirnstein. For those on foot, a small railway station offers a train at regular intervals to Diirnstein, cutting through several dramatic outcrops of rock. Between Stein and Diirnstein rises a tall classical monument erected in 1805 to com¬memorate a victory over Napoleon's troops here.

Unter Loiben has a Gothic church with a pleasing picture by Kremser Schmidt (1718-1801), an artist to be encountered again in Diirnstein. The town itself is perhaps the most picturesque spot in the entire Wachau. The town is minute, boasting a population of barely a thousand souls. It is dominated by the extensive ruins of the castle (ascent twenty¬ five minutes) from the summit of which there is an unsurpassed view of the valley. The castle was stormed on many occasions and was finally reduced by the Swedes in 1645. As a ruin, it is thus contemporary with the remains of many English castles which had to face Cromwell's armies.

But Diirnstein is perhaps best remembered for the legend that from
December 1l92 to March 1193 it was the prison of Richard the Lion¬heart. It may be recalled that at the siege of Acre, Richard hurled the standard of the Austrian Archduke Leopold from the ramparts as he considered it an insult that any flag should fly over the Holy Land before the standard bearing the three lions of England. This unfortunate disagreement over protocol resulted in the jealous Leopold placing a price on Richard's head, with the consequence that shortly after his landing at Trieste he was apprehended and eventually conveyed to this castle. Whether, as legend relates, Blondel found his master by sing¬ing underneath the windows of the castles of the Wachau is a matter for conjecture, beyond the scope of this guide, but there can have been no more worthy setting acoustically or visually for the minstrel's
songs.

The monastery in Diirnstein Austria

Below, the actual town of Diirnstein possesses fewer buildings than
its neighbours to attract the eye, but there is a fine eighteenth-century monastery, formerly a convent, near the river, while the town church contains more paintings by Kremser Schmidt. The Schloss Hotel, con¬sidered one of the top establishments in the world of its kind, has a charming terrace which in summer is a favourite venue for lunch. The black Bulgarian or Russian tugs which slowly power their way up river are perhaps the most curious examples of the river's traffic. The ships of the First Danube Steam Ship Company call at Diirnstein and offer probably the most relaxing way of seeing the Wachau between here and Melk. But if the journey is continued by bicycle, the road to Melk offers a number of picturesque distractions.

At Weissenkirchen, there are the remains of medieval fortifica¬tions, and above the village, which is idyllically situated among vine¬clad hills, there is a fourteenth-century late Gothic church. Inevitably the church, like so many in Austria, underwent insensitive Baroque conversion in the late seventeenth century. None the less, it contains some memorable paintings by two nineteenth-century artists, Rudolf Ait and Jacob Schindler, who spent much of their time painting in the Wachau.

Beyond Weissenkirchen is another charming village called St. Michael.The church is a late Gothic basilica and has an interesting roof. Nearby is a curious building which at first glance stems to be a chapel. But by brushing the dust off a small squint-like window a sinister scene is revealed: on an altar lie score after score of madly grinning skulls the debris of a fourteenth-century charnel house.

On the Danube side of the village is an impressive defensive tower that once guarded the road, which now continues to Spitz Anderdonau,a mile or so beyond, another picturesque wine-growing village (it has trains to Vienna). Both the old Town Hall with its frescoes and the seventeenth-century Schloss Spitz merit a visit, while high above the town rise the thirteenth-century ruins of Schloss Hinterhaus, destroyed by the French in 1809.

The road continues through Oberndorf and Willendorf to Aggsbach Markt, from where a passenger ferry crosses the Danube to the village of Aggsbach, which is again dominated by a picturesque ruin, Aggsbach castle. Constructed in the twelfth century, the castle was bitterly con¬tested throughout its history until in 1529 the Turks invested it for over a month before finally setting fire to it. None the less, its kitchen, dining room and Gothic chapel as well as the small rose garden, which com¬mands such a fine view over the Danube, are still all to be seen if one can muster enough energy for the ascent.

Having crossed the Danube, the road continues to Schonbiihel with its empire-style chateau and Baroque Servite monastery (suitable re¬freshment), before continuing six miles to the magnificent climax of the Wachau at Melk.

Josefstadt Vienna

Behind the Town Hall, where the Friedrich Schmidt Platz stands with its heavy and not very attractive eclectic buildings, lies the Josefstadt, one of the most charming suburbs of Vienna which in recent years has taken on a new lease of life as a home for many of the artistic and more creative elements of the city.

The Florianigasse leads between cafes into the heart of this area. As well as several small antique shops, the road boasts a fine Italian res¬taurant, known as Scarabocchio. At the corner of the Schlosselgasse stands the house where Emanuel Schikaneder, the librettist of Mozart's Die Zauberjlijte, died.

Past the public baths of the Langegasse is the Piaristengasse, full of small shops and tailors. The street itself has a striking surprise in the form of the rather unattractively named Jodok Fink Platz, which none the less is one of the most charming squares in the city. It is dominated by the impressive Baroque Piaristen (Maria Treu) church which was designed by Hildebrandt in the late 1680s but completed by Mathias Gerl almost a century later. Its remarkable plan, spatially one of the most daring in the city, would seem to have been inspired by Borromini's Sant' Agnese in Rome. The space wanders out of every corner in a quite un-Viennese way.

Continuing along the street, No. 41 is as forbidding a Ringstrasse palais as any to be found in the city, while No. 27, one of the last town Heurigens offers a delightful if unassuming garden in which to enjoy a glass of wine during the early evening. To the left under an arch stands the English theatre, with its prim but elegant turn-of-the¬century interior, while to the right the Rotenhof offers more Teutonic entertainment, being the home of one of the famous Burschenschaften, or pan-German student clubs, whose members to this day carry sabres with which to inflict on each other the requisite marks of so-called manliness and comradeship. Even in a street lined with Biedermeier houses and trees, the sight of these weapons hanging on the walls inside causes a frisson of unease to Anglo-Saxon sensibilities.

The Lerchenfelderstrasse offers a pleasing vista of towers and one very exciting twenties building. Across down the undistinguished Kel¬lermanngasse is the Neustiftgasse, with its buildings by Otto Wagner on the right.

To the left, across the Neustiftgasse, however, is the charming St Ulrichs Platz, with the Cafe Nepomuk, a modern but attractive resting place. The entire square is unearthly in its abandoned but picturesque state. The church is relatively undistinguished late Baroque, but the house at No.2, dating from the mid-1700s, is a not-to-be-missed gem with a courtyard and chapel.

The Burggasse Vienna

The Burggasse opposite the church's west entrance is a long road offering a fine view of the centre of the city and its cathedral spire. Following the road down and taking the Spittelberggasse on the right, we shall soon reach the cobbled streets of a quarter which, if not quite in the Josefstadt, possesses a no less engaging urban ensemble. Here there are many beer houses and small restaurants sandwiched among the houses. At the far end lies the Siebensterngasse, with its Baroque inns, dominated by the vast flak towers erected under the 'thousand-year Reich' to defend the city from allied bombing in the Second World War. From here a tram or a brisk five-minute walk will bring us back to the Ring and the city centre.

Schonbrunn Vienna

From the underground station of the Josefstiidterstrasse, behind the Rathaus, a train will take us to another delightful suburb of the city:
Hietzing and the exquisite park of Schonbrunn. Alighting at Schon brunn, take the first entrance to the park, which stretches from here to the next station, Hietzing. The park, which covers 197 hectares, is laid out in the French eighteenth-century style, with formal hedges and dramatic vistas enlivened by the usual architectural fripperies of the age. In a delightful temple-like house hidden among the trees, an old lady offers glasses of water from a centuries-old spring.

Behind some other bushes is an unpretentious restaurant, while nearby at the end of one vista there seems to rise from the ground a Piranesian pile of columns and en tablatures. Farther on, a large basin with Neptunes, sea-horses and Tritons contains a pair of suitably dramatic fountains.

But the most interesting construction in the park is the Gloriette, which sits grandly on a hill overlooking the palace. It is a dull but useful building, offering from its roof exquisite views of Vienna, views which have not changed that much since the days when Napoleon, who made Schonbrunn his headquarters in 18°9, looked out from the very same spot. As in the Belvedere and parts of the Hofburg, there is an inevitable scattering of sculptured headless warriors commemorating imaginary feats of arms. Even in the summer, the park can seem quite empty towards sunset, and the Gloriette, designed by Hohenburg in 1775, loses its classical coolness, becoming bathed in a rich golden light.

The actual palace, whose origins go back to the fourteenth century, is best seen from here. Although only part of Fischer von Erlach's gran¬diose plans were realized, the Seven Years War interrupted his scheme to turn this into a grander palace than Versailles and much was altered by Pacassi in the 1740s, its pleasing yellow faryade is impressive under a summer sky. Close to, the detailing is rather tacky and the disastrous colour scheme of the garden flowers and yellow garden facade does not help. The interior of the palace is one of the disappointments of Central Europe. Of the 1,441 rooms, only a handful are shown, and few of these are either well decorated or possess any grandeur. Of historical value only is the extraordinary Empire Roomin which Napoleon's son, the Duke of Reichstadt, died.

The former stables nearby contain a modest collection of carriages, while the road facade of the palace has two obelisks crowned by Napo¬leonic eagles placed there during his brief stay and never removed by the Habsburgs.

A walk across the garden brings us to Hietzing. This western part of the park contains a menagerie, the zoological gardens and the botanical gardens, with a monumental but rather inelegant palm house rarely open to the public. Most of the lawns, despite their somewhat rough surface, are not to be walked on, but on summer afternoons the keepers who are supposed to enforce this petty rule rarely exert themselves and the Rasen can be trod with impunity.

Leaving the Schlosspark at the western gate we come to the Hietzing village square, with its statue of Maximilian of Mexico and its Gothic church. At the start of a woody avenue the Auhofstrasse is the finest cafe in all Vienna, perhaps in all Europe: Dommayers. Dommayers deserves this accolade not so much because it was the favourite haunt of Johann Strauss or because its interior is light, unstuffy and bustling with elegance and English newspapers but because it combines these things with food of considerable quality.

To breakfast here on ham and eggs or on the superb joghurts with hot blackcurrants is a delight. True, the service may seem a little aged, but patience is nowhere better rewarded in Vienna than in this establishment. The garden in summer is another agreeable feature of the cafe.

The Vienna Cheap Car hire for Airports

The evening dealt with in so civilized a manner, it only remains to cross the Danube Canal to discover a part of Vienna which offers considerable attraction at night, the famous Prater, with its giant wheel so brilliantly filmed in 1949 in the The Third Man. It can easily be reached by the underground. The square we emerge from is dominated by the imposing Tegetthoff monument, dedicated to the naval hero of Lissa.Before embarking on any of the entertainments the Prater offers, we must of course first pay homage to the 'Big Wheel', the symbol of the park and as much an association with the Austrian capital as any waltz by Strauss. It was designed by a British engineer called Walter Basset, who in the 1880s, after service in the Royal Navy, designed a number of wheels for fairgrounds in Europe. This one was almost identical to one in Paris and another in Blackpool and is the only survivor of the three.


Badly damaged in the last war, it has been restored to its former glory. A touching if somewhat faded exhibition of photographs portrays its creator, resplendent in full-dress naval uniform, and the various stages of its construction, as well as predictably a couple of stills from the film which immortalized the wheel.

Equally inevitable, given that we are in Vienna, is the pace of the machine. But on an autumnal afternoon, there is no better way of escaping the high facades of the old city than to rise slowly above the richly coloured chestnuts of the Prater Hauptallee. All the green so sadly absent in the city is revealed before our eyes, the formal planning of the chestnut avenues cutting lines into the far distance.

Compared to this, the more conventional fare of ghost trains, miniature railway, helter-skelters etc. seem an anti-climax, although the tall Danube Tower nearby offers the very sixties thrill of a revolving restaurant.


Excursions from Vienna

After touring the capital, you can explore the picturesque environs of Vienna. All the following excursions take a full day and are best undertaken in favourable weather.

The Vienna Woods and Baden

As most guides quite rightly point out, no tour of Vienna is complete without a visit to a Heurigen, one of the inns in the Vienna Woods selling the young and somewhat astringent local Heurige white wine, which customers invariably dilute with soda water. The food at these establish¬ments is often first-class, especially the bread and Liptauer orange¬-coloured cheese, but in recent years many have become tourist traps which the more discerning traveller should try to avoid. Grinzing and Kahlenberg, the two most traditional locations for Heurigens, are now almost entirely filled with coachloads of tourists, although during the winter a visit to Reblaus in Grinzing still provides an opportunity to savour something of the old Heurigen atmosphere.

A far better idea is to take the tram to Potzleinsdorf and the bus then to Neustift-am-Walde and walk along the Agnesweg over the hill to Sievering, a delightfully unspoilt village which contains several ex¬cellent Heurigen, of which Agnes is perhaps the most renowned. The delightful Biedermeier houses which make up upper and lower Sievering repay considerable study and so far its leafy calm has not been spoilt by buses of American or Italian tourists 'doing' a Heurigen under the super¬vision of some hapless girl attired in a dirndl.

To enjoy the Vienna Woods fully, however, it is essential to go farther afield and take a train from the Siidbahnhof to either Modling or Baden.

Modling Village Austria


Modling is a village just on the edge of the Vienna Woods over¬looking the Danube plain towards Hungary. Its town museum is full of nostalgic photographs of the remarkable railway which used to run from here across the valley to Hinterbriihl. Although the town has been done up recently with rather excessive zeal, especially as regards the posi¬tioning of nineteenth-century lanterns, there are several medieval buildings. Along the main road past the museum towards the church are some with frescoed faiYades.

At the time of the Turkish wars, Modling suffered terribly. The entire population was put to the sword, a tragedy recorded by numerous memorial stones to the left of the church on the hill. Although a Rom¬anesque chapel nearby contains several fragments of frescoes, the church itself has lost much of its atmosphere because of an over-enthusiastic restoration programme.

From this church a path winds round to the left towards a fine old viaduct which once carried the railway to Vorderbriihl. It then descends between dramatic rocks, crosses the road and soon ascends to the ruined castle of Modling, with its extensive views across the country. A further path leads along the so-called Drei Stunden Weg (Three Hours' Path), a delightful walk which can be easily accomplished in far less time, to the Husaren temple. This temple, with its Neo-Classical columns, is a kind of miniature Austrian Valhalla erected by Prince Liechtenstein as a tomb for the seven hussars who died saving his life from an attack of French cavalry during the battle of Aspern It is a bleak, windy place, hauntingly beautiful in autumn. Returning to Modling, just before we reach the town, a path to the right, described as the Beethoven Wanderweg, eventually comes to Baden; but for those who are already exhausted by walking, a train from Modling will convey them to that town after a cake at one of Modling's fine cafes or a meal at one of the many Italian restaurants in the centre.

The house of Mozart and Vienna attractions

Back up the Wollzeile and beyond the yellow Konig von Ungarn Hotel is the entrance to the Domgasse, where stands the house in which Mozart first lived in Vienna. Some of its exhibits appear closely con¬nected with the composer, while others, though interesting, have little relevance to Mozart's stay in the capital.

The Grunangergasse, at the corner of the Domgasse, has the imposing Baroque Palais Furstenberg, whose portal is guarded by two stone greyhounds. On one side of the street, which is one of the best-preserved architectural ensembles in the city, is the Green Anchor, which eighty years ago was one of the best-known Italian restaurants in the empire. It still has considerable charm. In the summer, it is possible to sit outside in the shadow of the cathedral's soaring tower and enjoy a first class wine list. The speciality of this restaurant, which must be sampled, is the so-called Schlosserbuben, a chocolate and nut pudding which is un¬rivalled.

The Singerstrasse Vienna

The Singerstrasse beyond is dominated on the left by the handsome Palais Rottal, designed in 1750 by Franz Hillebrandt, one of the second division of Austria's Baroque architects. The facade makes effective use of pilasters without capitals, a favourite motif of the period. The entire street towards the cathedral is rich in Baroque houses, of which the grandest is the Palais Neupauer, erected in 1715 by an unknown arch¬itect.

Across the Singerstrasse, there is an even more picturesque ensemble in the form of the Franziskanerplatz. This square, with its uneven roof¬line and fountain alas, usually surrounded by cars has remained virtually unchanged for centuries. The towering chimneys of the corner houses and the elegant gables of the Franciscan church facade combine attractively with the ironwork of the Baroque house on the Weihburg¬gasse. Flanked by a green painted wooden front is the notorious Kleines Cafe, the coffee-house for the 'alternative' middle-aged of the city, daily resounding to the cries of children, usually wheeled in by their unmarried mothers between shopping expeditions.

The square's fountain depicts Moses and dates from 1798.

The Franciscan church, with its attached cloister, is a strange building. The roundels which mark the facade were once the only windows, as the establishment was first conceived as a house of correction from which its hapless inmates would not be permitted to look out onto the road beyond. The church was begun in 1603, but there are Gothic as well as Renaissance elements in the front. Predictably, the interior is mainly Baroque, with a high altar by Andrea Pozzo, whose work we have already admired in the Jesuitenkirche. Above stands an exquisitely carved organ which dates from the seventeenth century. A fashionable church on Sunday, it is much in demand for society weddings.

Under an archway in the south corner of the square begins the old and winding Ballgasse, which leads past various cafes to the Rauhen¬steingasse. No.8, which houses one of the best bakeries in the city, is impressively Baroque, and on the site of the house next door Mozart composed his Magic Flute and Requiem, and died.

The Rauhensteingasse leads to the Himmelpfortgasse and the Cafe Frauenhuber, a long established cafe which adheres rigidly to the rules of coffee nomenclature. It may therefore be a suitable moment to point out that simply ordering 'a coffee' is impossible in Vienna. Every shade is given a name, to say nothing of optional extras like cocoa powder, whipped cream, rum or even eggs. The term 'Melange' will usually produce the familiar coffee with milk. But those who require a stronger cup will usually order 'einen braunen' or, if no milk whatsoever is desired, 'eine schwarze Mokka'.

Coffee with masses of whipped cream, usually served in a glass, is known as an Einspiinner, while different shades of the popular Melange can be ordered by reference to the colour of certain monastic orders' habits. Thus a Franziskaner is lighter than a Capuziner. Different cafes have slightly varying definitions, but the above will serve as a general guide in all the older establishments.

Next door to the Frauenhuber is a remarkable secular work of Fischer von Erlach, Prince Eugen of Savoy's Winter Palace built between 1695 and 1698. Much has been written about the delicate sculpture of the facade, the noble proportioning of the storeys and the dramatic use of pilasters. The palace now houses the Austrian Exchequer. Its staircase represents the culmination of Fischer's highly plastic style and manifests a break with the traditions of Roman Baroque. No Italian architect would have resorted to the curiously tortured and weird forms Fischer delights in here.

The Kartnrstrasse Vienna

At the end of the Himmelpfortgasse is a depressing sight: the busiest and alas ugliest principal thoroughfare of the city, the Kartnerstrasse, spoiled by tacky department stores and a series of lanterns which must rank among the most hideous of any city in Europe.

The Neuer Markt Vienna

Crossing over into the altogether more agreeable Neuer Markt, we should (without failing to admire the more pleasing facades above the shops) make straight for the red, restored Capuchin church (1622-32). Few facades are as dull and unprepossessing. But the door on the left gives entrance into the most hallowed quarters of imperial Vienna, the Habsburg vaults. It will be recalled that the hearts of the Habsburgs are in the Augustine church, but their tombs are mostly here. The vaults are open every day of the year and visitors are exhorted to conduct themselves in a respectful and silent manner.

However, once the garish staircase into the vaults has been negotiated, the bold letters demanding 'Silentium' seem a little pointless as, unless we are very lucky, the sound of tour groups each hearing a detailed description of the personages contained within the sarcophagi will destroy any sense of mystery sur¬rounding this macabre resting place. The lunch hour or the late after¬noon, before the Gruft closes, are the best times to contemplate these sombre relics in peace.

We arrive at the end of the stairs in the 'old vault', enlarged in 1701.
This contains the sarcophagi of the earliest Habsburgs, from Matthias (d. 1619) onwards. To the left is the new vault, added in 1748 and dominated by the Baroque hyperbole of Maria Theresa's enormous double sarcophagus in which she lies with her husband. As befits his character, an altogether far less showy sarcophagus contains the remains of Joseph II. Beyond stands the more 'empire' tomb of Francis I. To the right of this room a low dark vault contains the sarcophagi of Archduke Charles, the Austrian general who defeated Napoleon at the battle of Aspern, Maximilian, the ill-fated emperor of Mexico who met his death at the hands of a revolutionary firing squad in 1867, and, opposite, the beautiful Marie Louise, the second wife of Napoleon, who died in 1847.

A room straight ahead leads to Franz Josef (d.1916), who reigned for over sixty years, and his wife, the Empress Elizabeth. The third tomb is that of another Habsburg to die violently, Crown Prince Rudolf, victim of the hunting lodge tragedy at Mayerling in 1889. The stream of myths and stories which surround Rudolf's death are unequalled in modern royal fiction, and mystery still surrounds what is generally believed to have been a suicide pact with his mistress, Marie Vetsera.

Beyond, an altar marks an empty vault kept immaculately clean. A bust of Austria's last emperor, Kaiser Karl, who died in exile on the island of Madeira in 1922, marks one wall. Whether he will return from that island to lie here among his dynastic relatives is a thorny question for the Austrian government, ever wary of anything which might arouse monarchist feeling, but in the meantime an army of cleaners keep every square inch spotless.

Another Habsburg who was a contemporary of Karl's and does not lie here is the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Habsburg throne whose assassination was the fuse to the First World War. He had married a mere countess, much to the horror of his imperial and royal relatives, and rather than allow himself to be buried away from her, he insisted long before he met his death with her on the streets of Sarajevo that they should enjoy each other's company for ever at the castle of Artstetten along the Danube. He is reported to have dismissed the imperial vaults with the words: 'I would never have any peace lying there with electric trams rattling overhead all the time.'

The Sacher Hotel Vienna

From the Capuchin vaults, a brief walk past the Tirolerhof Cafe leads to the Opera, opposite which stands the best-known hotel in the city, the Sacher. Sacher's is clearly not what it was. The unlimited credit afforded to favoured guests in Frau Sacher's time is today almost non-existent, so that the culinary delights of the restaurant (especially to be recommended is the Kalbschnitzel Eduard Sacher) cannot be enjoyed with credit cards. Even cheques are rarely accepted. But these slight irritations aside, the rooms of the Sacher, like its Kaffeehaus, boast a collection of paintings no hotel in the world can rival.

Even Otto von Habsburg, the present heir to the Habsburg claims, peers in full-dress Austrian uniform between Biedermeier paintings on a second-floor corridor. The hall of the hotel also contains a photograph gallery, open most evenings after five o'clock, which houses portraits of the most distinguished guests who have stayed here, including members of the British military government whose officers' mess this was after the Second World War. The famous Austrian aristocratic names of Her¬berstein and Czernin appear as smudged signatures across the uniforms of the most dashing nobility Europe ever knew.

The Vienna Opera and the Karlsplatz

From the Opera, it is just a couple of minutes' walk to the Karlsplatz where, as well as some of Otto Wagner's more quaint railways stations, recently restored in vivid golds and greens, there is another monument of the fertile Jugendstil period, the Secession building, constructed by Wagner's most gifted pupil, Josef Olbrich, in 1897-8. Its copper 'cab¬bage' dome and very simple form enraged the Viennese, but the building served as a suitably unconventional home for the exhibitions of all the great turn-of-the-century artists. Klimt, Hoffmann and Kolo Moser all exhibited here in protest at the conservative and reactionary artists of the Academy. Today the building boasts no such talented or revolutionary exhibits and those who wish to see more of Vienna's 'golden period' should pursue the Wienzeile, past the markets and well-known Saturday morning antique fairs, to the mosaiced and highly decorative houses of Otto Wagner, a few hundred yards down on the right.

Those, however, who prefer the more sumptuous delights of the Baroque should cross the Karlsplatz to examine Fischer von Erlach's supreme ecclesiastical achievement, the Karlskirche. Few churches even of the Baroque period made as much use of the dramatic and monu¬mental devices available to their architects as this extraordinary building. One glance is enough to convince anyone that it is a most remarkable creation.

The commission to build the church was given to Fischer by the emperor in fulfilment of a vow made to St Charles Borromeo in 1713, as thanksgiving for deliverance from the plague. As in Fischer's great church the Kollegienkirche in Salzburg, the facade is kept low, but here because of the breadth of the site the fas;ade stretches to over 180 feet in its entirety. Drawing on his immense knowledge of 'world architecture.´ Fischer was the first architect to write a history of arch¬itecture, and he employed Roman Trajan columns modelled on those in the Forum to flank the fascade, with reliefs symbolizing the victory of faith over disease.

Vienna Attractions and places to visit

The Minorites Church Vienna

The Minorites' church's interior, entered from the west door, is bleak and white like many Viennese churches, but it contains a unique, for Austria, piece of Rococo Gothic in its high altar, again by the ubiquitous Hohenburg. A chapel to the left of this pays tribute to the many Italians who once lived under the Habsburg monarchy, and the church today is still the Italian church in the city.

The Abraham and Sancta Clara Gasse leads from the Palais Liechten stein to the Bankgasse, where the Hungarian embassy is housed in an impressive late-eighteenth-century palace. To its right is the Palais Batthany, probably designed by Fischer von Erlach, but uninteresting save for the rather heavy portal.

The rather down-at-heel palais opposite in the Herrengasse is the former property, of the Harrach family, who, like the Batthanys, Dietrichsteins and Liechtensteins, all held important positions at the Austrian court, e.ach family having the right to be part of this most exclusive club by virtue of the sixteen quarterings their arms displayed. For some years now the Harrach Palais has stood empty, a sad reminder of the former glory of the Herrengasse.

The Palais Porcia Vienna

At the end of the Herrengasse, the Palais Porcia (built in 1546) contains a delightful courtyard with blind arcades, which even the worst excesses of modern Austrian bad taste, such as ugly lamps, have failed to destroy. Next door stands the piece de resistance of the entire street, the Palais Kinsky. Built by Hildebrandt in 1712 for Count Daun, it has a rich facade and a spectacular staircase (apply to the porter; the ability to speak Serbo-Croat is useful). The narrowness of the space available for Hildebrandt in no way cramped his style,as the magnificent stone panels of the balustrade still indicate. Once it was possible to eat delicious goulash in the former palace stables, where a restaurant thrived under pictures of Herzog and other horses. It is now closed, but the nearby Cafe Central makes a suitable end to a day's sightseeing.

Off the beaten track in Vienna

Off the well-trodden paths of the Herrengasse, Graben and Kohlmarkt, there are less well-known corners of Vienna which seem to have remained unchanged for decades and even at the height of summer afford refuge from the crowds of sightseers.

Opposite the west end of St Stephen's Cathedral runs the Jaso-mirgottstrasse. 'Jasomirgott' ('So help me God'), a common phrase in Vienna, was the nickname bestowed on Heinrich II (1141-77), the first Habsburg to establish his capital in Vienna, because of his fondness for this particular oath. It was during his rule that Austria was given the special status of a hereditary Duchy within the Holy Roman Empire.

At the end of this street stands a picturesque eighteenth-century building. By contrast, a turning to the right leads into Brandstiitte, where can be seen one of the most extraordinary pre-First World War con¬structions in Vienna: the Zacherlhaus by JosefPlecnik (1872-1956). The large metal angel fixed to the facade was long dubbed by the Viennese the patron saint of cockroach assassins, as the house used to be the headquarters of a company dedicated to the production of D.D.T. Some eighty years after it was erected, in 1907, the building still has a startling modernity about it.

The Tuchlauben which leads off to the left has some interesting houses, too, notably a Neo -Classical chemist's and the early eighteenth ¬century Hochholzerhof to its right. The Steindlgasse between them weaves its way to the least changed quarters of the city. The Gosser¬bierklinik offers appetizing Austrian cuisine and is a suitable halting post for lunch. The nearby Kurrentgasse contains a more sophisticated restaurant. The Steindlgasse eventually leads to the picturesque Schulhof, where the Vienna clock museum is well worth at least a cursory inspection. To our left is the Gothic choir of the church Am Hof. We should bear this medieval exterior in mind when we later turn the corner and go inside. The palais at NO.4 Schulhof is the final jewel in the square, although its courtyard is a disappointment after the rich decoration of the mellow seventeenth-century facade, which is the very finest early Baroque.

The Am Hof Square Vienna

An arch to the left leads to the square Am Hof (literally 'At the Court'), so called because it was here that Jasomirgott established his court when he made Vienna his capital. The square, like so many in Vienna, has suffered the ravages of cars but it remains a pleasant space bounded to the left by the Baroque church and to the right in the opposite corner by the sixteenth-century arsenal, now the headquarters of the Fire Brigade.

The church Am Hof, with its early seventeenth-century Baroque facade pushing out into the square, is a not particularly convincing attempt at Roman Baroque spatial effects as practised by Borromini. The interior has a hopelessly cluttered and tasteless nave dating from the first half of the seventeenth century, although the choir, with its striking coffering so unexpected after the very Gothic exterior is rather more successful. The church today is the city shrine of the Croat population of Vienna and on Sundays is crowded with happy, devout Balkan types.

The Vienna cellars

On the same side of the square, at No. 12, is the Urbanikeller. No other part of the city gives a better impression of the seventeenth-century cellars that lie underneath most of the old city than this unpretentious restaurant. To step down its wooden stairs is to enter another world and to understand why the besieging Turks in 1683 set so much store by mining underneath the city's fortifications. An entry forced here, if successful, would have had dire consequences for the future of the city.

At the centre of the square stands a monument to the Virgin Mary, erected in 1667 by Kaiser Leopold I. The quaint putti contest, albeit with little obvious commitment, the evils of war, hunger and the plague.

From this square we can move back towards the town centre to the left and perhaps stop for a quick bite at the excellent Jugendstil Black Camel, the only bar and restaurant which offers Italian-style standing service for those in need of a quick bite. But to the right, past the Austrian flag factory, there is another interesting square, the Freyung.

The Benedictine Church Vienna

The uninspired church here is the Benedictine Schottenkirche (1638-48), named after its first monks, who were of Celtic origin and were referred to as Scots, although it seems more likely that they were Irish. In any event they were Benedictines whom Heinrich Jasomirgott, impressed by what he had heard of this order's piety, decided to summon to Austria in 1150. But within a year of their arrival, these monks considerably rumed the feathers of their Viennese hosts. According to a contemporary account, 'they stuck obstinately to their language and quarrelled constantly with the inhabitants'. They were reported to be trading in furs, initiating wild dances (reels?) and, most scandalously of all, starting 'games of ball'.

This was the last straw. Duke Albrecht V told the monks that their monastery would no longer be restricted to Celts. Abbot Thomas's response to this decree manifested a robust disrespect, unashamedly Irish, for the authorities. He tersely announced that if monks of any other nationality entered the building, he and his fellow Hibernians would strangle them. Some German Benedictines who did attempt to enter were given a fierce drubbing. But by 1432 the Germans had succeeded in expelling these unwelcome guests and setting up a model, if less boisterous, monastery.

The courtyard today, with its austere Neo-Classicism, shows little sign of such disturbances, and the fine library (apply to the Abbot) has a tranquillity which is still completely monastic. A statue in the courtyard commemorates Jasomirgott, while a second courtyard offers a calm if inaccessible area of green. For a glimpse of anything dating from the turbulent years of Abbot Thomas we must enter the Schotten church.
This is the French church of the city and contains several monuments to French families who either fought for or served under the Habsburgs. The Baroque decoration of the interior, the work of A. Allio, is less fussy than that of the Am Hof church and there are some fine monu¬ments, especially a Neo-Classical black marble one on the right, to balance this bland decor. The last altar on the left contains the oldest statue of a Madonna in Vienna, while the passage beyond the choir has some masonry and fragments of fresco which are contemporary with Abbot Thomas's rowdy monks. In the crypt below lies Jasomirgott himself, in a humble tomb one cannot help feeling Heinrich would have approved of.

Leaving the church, there is another characteristic coffee house at the Cafe Haag in the courtyard (Schottenhof). Back past the heavy monument on the church's farrade is a nineteenth-century depiction {'¬Jasomirgott's medieval virtues, and passing the fragrant herb chemist', the street soon leads to the Palais Schon born, another precious creation of Fischer von Erlach. It no longer boasts its fine private painting collection, but the rooms on the first floor, now belonging to the Mexican embassy, are decorated in the best Viennese Rococo.

At Renngasse No. 12 there is a charming courtyard with a commemorative medallion to Kaiser Franz Josef and his wife, Elizabeth. Ahead, the Wipplingerstrasse leads to the left, to the Vienna Stock Exchange, a handsome building by Theophil Hansen, the architect of ¬the Vienna Parliament, as quiet as a sepulchre, thanks to Austria socialism. The road to the right leads to the curious High Bridge, a remarkable testament to the dramatic differences i between the innermost fortifications and the outer ring which would have fallen away from us to our left. A plaque above the art nouveau metalwork of the bridge relates that this was the eastern gate into the city during the days of the Babenbergs.

The Schwertgasse to the left leads to another legacy of medieval time in Passauer Square, the church of Maria am Gestade. The church's name, meaning literally 'On the Steps', refers to the fact that the stairs at the west end once led against the Danube, which ran here until it was rerouted in the 1890S b Otto Wagner. Fishermen deposited their catches here, and for this reason the church is the patron of all those concerned with the sea. Its magniflcent facade was constructed between 1394 and 1427 after the plans of Michael Weinwurm.

Gothic church interiors in Vienna

The interior provides another opportunity for studying different periods of Gothic. The most striking element is the way in which the narrow nave suddenly opens, off-axis, to the wide choir. This is usually inaccessible except on Sundays, but an effort should be made to walk in it, to dispel the intimate but almost cramped feeling one gets in the a Few Gothic churches anywhere in Central Europe offers an atmosphere of repose. Much of the glass is medieval; an extraordinary survival for Vienna, but its height precludes any chance of appreciating it except in the bright hours of the early morning. An audio guide, not usually to be recommended, is in this church an insight not so much into the history of the church as into the mentality of post-war Vienna. The slow, lugubrious, distinguished, charming but utterly bored voice evokes some penniless aristocrat of the 1950S resorting unwillingly to earning her keep by trading old linguistic skills.

From the Salvatorgasse, where there is a small chapel with a 1520 portal whose over-restored interior must be entered from the Wipp¬lingerstrasse, there runs the small lane known as Stoss in Himmel. The narrow but busy Wipplingerstrasse beyond it has two farrades which demand attention. First is the restored but still impressive farcade of Fischer von Erlach's Bohemian chancery, with an elaborate crowning portal. Then, standing opposite this, in the former Town Hall (Altes Rathaus), a dignified building of which the oldest part dates back to the fourteenth century. By a lateral wall in the court is the Andromeda fountain (1741), the last and most beautiful work of Raphael Donner.

The Hofburg and Franzensplatz Vienna

Entering the Hofburg, one comes to the Franzensplatz, named after the Emperor Francis I of Austria, whose statue is here. He was the last Austrian emperor to enjoy the title of Holy Roman Emperor (as Francis II of the Holy Roman Empire). Francis, who reigned from 1792 to 1835, ruled in stormy times, having to contend with Napoleon's desire to redraw the map of Europe, often at Austria's expense. After three major victories, in 1805 Napoleon declared the Holy Roman Empire dissolved. Perhaps foreseeing this, Francis had in 1804 elevated Austria to the rank of empire and thus, even after his abdication as Holy Roman Emperor in 1806, he remained of equal rank with the newly created Emperor Napoleon.

If ever there was a Habsburg who kept his head when all those about him were losing theirs, it was Francis. His armies annihilated on the plains of Italy and hills of Moravia, his capital occupied by French troops, even his daughter, Marie Louise, married off to the Corsican ogre, Francis still kept cool and waited for his moment to help Europe be rid of the French emperor, which he did in 1813 at the battle of Leipzig. Something of a severe character, Francis none the less earned the soubriquet 'Biedermeier Kaiser' for his bourgeois predilection for a simple and homely suburban life.

Behind the statue of the emperor rises the Amalientrakt of the palace.
Built in the seventeenth century, the rooms here are furnished in the style of the Empress Maria Theresa, who made this part of the 'Burg' her home. Unfortunately, as this section of the palace houses the offices of the Austrian president, there is little or no chance of inspecting it. Opposite is the equally inaccessible Reichkanzleitrakt, designed by Fischer von Erlach for Karl VI in 1729, which contains former imperial apart¬ments and some offices leading to the Chancellery.

To the left is the red and black Schweizertor, which leads to the oldest part of the palace. This impressive gateway, named after the Swiss mercenaries who once guarded it, dates from 1552 and bears the arms of the original Habsburg archduchy. The courtyard beyond contains two unexpected delights. The first, up the stairs on the right, is the Burg¬kapelle, where on Sundays the Vienna Boys' Choir can be heard.The chancel is the only interesting feature in the chapel: it contains the oldest Gothic work in the entire Hofburg. This can be admired to a certain extent from outside, in the next courtyard, but for the moment one must avoid the temptation to go further into the Jos¬efsplatz and stay in the Hofburg, where one may examine, opposite the chapel, the second surprise, the imperial treasury. This includes the crown of the Holy Roman Emperors and nothing less spectacular than the imperial sword and orb of Charlemagne. At the time of writing, this is temporarily on loan to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, across the Ring.

The Heldenplatz and the Ringstrasse

Retracing one's steps out of the Schweizerhof, another arcade appears on the left. Through this lies the impressive 'range' (as these facades are called) of the Hofburg, the Heldenplatz and beyond it the Ringstrasse, with its imposing buildings. The sense of space is welcome if only because very few parts of Vienna offer the chance to see so much sky.

The curved Neo-Baroque part of the Hofburg, designed by the distin¬guished nineteenth century German architect Gottfried Semper, is on the left. Semper planned an identical range opposite, hoping to create a kind of imperial forum. Fortunately, his plans came to nothing, and so we can enjoy a fine view of the Burgtor, a Neo-Classical work, and beyond, Semper's domed museums, the Kunsthistorisches and Natur¬historisches. To the right of these, above the trees, race the Grecian chariots on the roof of Theophil von Hansen's NeoGrec Parliament, while beyond it, in yet another nineteenth-century style, rises the Neo¬-Gothic Town Hall, to complete this extravagant lesson in architectural styles.

The Semper range of the Hofburg contains a delightful museum of antique musical instruments and an impressive collection of armour, as well as the manuscript and reading rooms of the National Library. It also contains the Austrian Ethnographic Museum, which attempts, rather un¬successfully, to re-create long-forgotten cultures in a foreign land. How¬ever, the museum's impressive marbled vestibule is a spectacular example of Semper's ability to construct a grand but not overpowering interior.
Before embarking on more museum work, it may be a good idea to walk through the Volksgarten on the right, to admire the Neo-Classical temple at its centre and, at the other end, the imposing Burgtheater, also designed by Semper.

On entering the Volksgarten, cast a glance at the buildings to the right. The two low ranges are a rare example of Viennese architectural understatement. This is ironic, for the Ballhausplatz, the minute square between the ranges, was a synonym for politics throughout the Habsburgs' reign, and indeed even later. From here Metternich entertained the Congress of Vienna in 1815. What the Wilhelmstrasse became for Prussia and Whitehall for England, the 'Ball platz' was for Austria.

Its name suggests the frivolous nature of politics in the late nineteenth century, and although the word alone was enough to cause a ripple of fear throughout the empire, in London it could provoke a wry smile in diplomatic circles, where the hidebound nature of Austrian methods were well known.

Emerging from the Volksgarten, the nearest Burgtheater wing contains early frescoes by Gustav Klimt. These can usually be inspected by applying to the theatre porter. On the other side of the theatre is the Cafe Landtmann, a suitable point at which to recover from the day's exertions, containing as it does most of the respectable English news¬papers and encouraging the comfortable indolence which is the true mark of the Viennese cafe. Be warned, however, that even in cold weather the cloakroom lady will insist on visitors leaving their coats with her.

Art and museums in Vienna


An hour spent in the Landtmann will prepare one for a visit to the museums on the other side of the Ring, including the important col¬lections of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. These should not be attempted without at least two hours in hand. But even a morning would be too short a time for those who take their Kunst seriously.

The Kunsthistorisches Museum is one of the richest (if least well known) European art collections. The paintings were once the property of the imperial family and were assembled by the Habsburgs over three hundred years. Occasionally, some of the greatest works were lost, as, for example, when the Swedes plundered Prague during the Thirty Years War. As Prague was then the seat of government, many irre¬placeable treasures were lost. Another hundred paintings had to be sent to the Dresden gallery in the eighteenth century as part of an indemnity to the King of Saxony because of a failed Austrian attempt to recover Silesia, the province that Frederick the Great of Prussia had wrenched from Maria Theresa. Other masterpieces were lost during the Napoleonic wars. But even after two world wars the gallery can boast the finest collection of Breughel the Elder in the world, a score of Rubens, Van Dycks, Velasquezes and Titians, some important Canaletto paintings and many significant works by North German masters relatively un¬known in England.

The entrance hall, with its grand vestibule, contains frescoes by Gustav Klimt and Franz Matsch which, though early, and therefore conven¬tional, are rather amusing. If time is pressing the first-floor Egyptian exhibits may be ignored. The rest of this floor, however, contains much to interest those who appreciate Renaissance bronze statues, medieval draughts sets or Bulgarian gold drinking vessels, to say nothing of the dazzling (and deservedly renowned) Cellini salt-cellar.

But it is the floor above which annually attracts the swarms of visitors who block the entrance to the small ticket desk. The stairs to this floor are long, but one is more than adequately rewarded for the climb by the paintings presented for inspection. The greatest treasures, such as the Breughels and Rubens, have enormous rooms to themselves, but many smaller treasures can be more enjoyably examined in the intimate series of rooms which break up the corridors around. Mantegna's exquisite Martyrdom of St Sebastian is displayed as if it were in a private study.

Bellini's Portrait of a Woman at her Toilet is equally accessible, while a small group of superb Holbeins fills another niche. These few paintings alone make the long walk upstairs seem worthwhile and that is even before the Titians, Velasquezes and other great works in the main rooms are seen.

The obvious resting place after a visit to the Kunsthistorisches is a Viennese cafe, but the nearest is across the Ring back in the Heldenplatz. The zoologically minded may prefer to linger in the building opposite the Kunsthistorisches, the Naturhistorisches Museum, which is identical in style to the art history museum and houses the natural history col¬lections. This building seems to have been left untouched by the trendy developments which mark the interiors of so many of London's mus¬eums. Look in vain for flashing lights, animated noises, and dark, sinister rooms. Instead, there is the more terrifying experience of being greeted at the top of the stairs by a soldier-crab (mercifully stuffed) whose legs seem almost twelve feet long.

Back to the Heldenplatz Vienna

Back to the Heldenplatz to look at two equestrian statues of that rare Austrian phenomenon, the successful general. We have already met Prince Eugen, who rides towards us from the Neue Hofburg, in the cathedral.
It is ironic to learn that this military genius, who not only defeated the Turks but was also Marlborough's ally at Blenheim, Oudenarde and Malplaquet, suffered the indignity of having his military services being refused, first by Louis XIV and the French court. Ap¬parently Eugen's 'sickly appearance, poor carriage in the saddle and insignificant height' counted against him. The Austrians, far less con¬cerned then with external appearances than they are today, saw the Savoy prince at his true worth and never lived to regret employing him.

The Archduke Karl Vienna

Opposite is the more dramatic statue of the Archduke Karl. If less gifted than Prince Eugen, he at least won the distinction of being the first general to inflict a serious loss on Napoleon when in 1809 the Austrians pushed the French back from Aspern, the Marchfeld village seen earlier from the top of the cathedral. The statue captures the moment when, seeing his Hungarian grenadiers falter, the archduke seized their standard, urging them to 'put every Frenchman to the sword'. The inscriptions on the Archduke's statue 'dedicated to the fearless leader of Austria's army' on one side and 'who fought for Germany's honour' on the other could have served as Austria's epitaph in 1938, the year the Nazis invaded. This curious identification of Germany's designs with Austria's interests was never accepted by many Austrians when Hitler's Reich swallowed up this country in the year before the last war. But the inscription reflects the ambivalence the Austrian has to¬wards the German. On the one hand he is more charming, and quick to accuse his northern neighbours of Prussian aloofness. On the other hand, he admires the Germans' efficiency, which the Austrian can rarely equal.

The Viennese in particular have a long history of tragic mistakes in organization. But perhaps because every Austrian seems to be an amalgam of Slav and Latin as well as Teutonic blood, these people remain masters of improvisation. In any event Austrian history has for centuries been inextricably bound up with that of Germany, even though few Austrians would appreciate being referred to as Germans.

The Burgtor nearby, designed by Nobile in 1818, contains another example of Austria's close ties with Germany: inside lies the tomb of the unknown soldier. Constructed in 1935, the design for the white staircase could have been the work of Albert Speer. The reclining marble soldier is an excellent if somewhat disturbing example of thirties sculp¬ture. As one emerges onto the Ring there are other whispers of the aggressiveness of the thirties. Two particularly hawkish, single-headed eagles have survived on the wall between the Burgtor and the Hofburg,almost all that remains of the thousand-year German Reich in this part of Vienna.

Vienna history and culture

There can be no better place to begin a tour of Vienna, or indeed of Central Europe, than at the heart of the Austrian capital: St Stephen's Cathedral (Stefansdom). Exercise of the kind needed to reach the viewing room of its south tower is not normally to be recommended, but there is much in Vienna that conduces to long hours of indolence, and a quick march up the tower's 533 steps will happily ward off any feelings of guilt during subsequent hours spent in the city's cafes.

From the top, the view (alas, owing to the high number of suicides, possible only through iron bars) offers a glimpse of lands where more than once the fate of Austria and indeed of Europe was decided. To the north the Vienna Woods cluster round the hills of Kahlenberg and Leopoldsberg. It was from here in 1683 that the armies of Jan Sobieski poured down on the Turks who were besieging the city, driving the infidel back and so commencing the long and tortuous decline of the 'sick man of Europe', as Tsar Nicholas was to call Turkey over two hundred years later.

The landscape of Austria

To the east the flat fields of the Marchfeld can be seen. A more undistinguished landscape would be difficult to imagine, but it was here that in 1278 Count Rudolf of Habsburg defeated King Ottokar of Bohemia, who, incidentally, was the monarch responsible for rebuilding the cathedral after the first St Stephen's was destroyed by fire in 1258. This victory not only gave Rudolf Vienna, it also marked the beginning of 640 years of Habsburg rule in Austria.

This was not the only battle to be fought on the Marchfeld. In 1809 over 300,000 troops were locked in one of the most sanguinary campaigns of the Napoleonic wars when, at the battle of Aspern, the Habsburg Archduke Karl inflicted the first defeat the French emperor had known on land. Six weeks later, at the battle of Wagram, Napoleon repulsed a second Austrian attack over the same ground and won a bloody victory, but at the cost of a quarter of his troops. For years afterwards the land of the Marchfeld was soft underfoot.

Such conflicts suggest that the Habsburgs were a military family bent on supremacy through sheer force of arms. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. 'Bella gerant alii. Tu Felix Austria nube' ('While others wage war, you, happy Austria, marry') was the phrase coined to express the way in which the ruling house acquired its land: through well-considered dynastic marriages in the centuries following Rudolf's victory on the Marchfeld.

Lobau and Marchfeld

In front of the woods of the Lobau and the Marchfeld rises the imposing Belvedere Palace, with its lawns and green copper domes. Closer to us are the gables of the Franciscan church, to the right of which, with its flags flying, is the yellow Hotel Imperial. The large boulevard which runs in a ring from the Imperial, past the domes of the Hofburg Palace visible from the south window, marks the fortifications of the city during the Turkish sieges. When they were demolished in the 1850s, the grand palaces, museums and parliament buildings were erected, giving Vienna a grandeur to match Paris and London.

Also from the south window, the Karlskirche, with its twin Trajan columns and green copper dome, can be seen. When it was begun in 1716 it lay on the glacis outside the fortifications. Even St Stephen's, now at the heart of Vienna, lay outside the old city, whose earliest walls ran along the Graben (literally 'the ditch'), now a road which runs towards the large green dome of the Hofburg, almost directly beneath us.

The east view belongs to the twentieth century. To the left of the Prater wheel (immortalized in the film The Third Man) the vast con¬crete flak towers erected for the defence of Vienna in the last war rise from the green of the Augarten. They belong, in a gruesome way, to the very best or worst of 1940S architecture. Even today their size makes them impossible to demolish without risk to neighbouring buildings. The north-west window (from which we spotted the Vienna Woods and Kahlenberg) brings us past the brown mass of the new city hospital to the twin mid-nineteenth-century Gothic towers of the Votivkirche on the Ring and back along the Graben.

The Cathedral in Vienna

The city below, with its Baroque domes, narrow streets and grand
palais, is still the Vienna of 1918, and the cathedral, thanks to sensitive Austrian planning, still dominates the skyline.

Those who feel the need to pause after the descent from the tower can do so at the tables opposite the west door the Riesentor, or 'giant door'of the cathedral. The Expresso zum Stefansplatz and the Domcafe (the latter is better if it's raining) are not typical coffee-houses, but they are comfortable and offer a good view of the west facade of the cathedral and the Riesentor. Most of what can be seen from here was at least partially rebuilt in the Gothic style when the present nave was added in 1446. Later alterations gave the hitherto unfinished north tower its Renaissance cupola, while the bright tiling of the roof has rightly been called a nineteenth-century apotheosis of lavatory decoration.

A walk round the outside of the church offers a field-day for funerary monument enthusiasts. Most of the monuments date from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and are indispensable to anyone tracing the development of Mannerism in Austrian sculpture. All repay close ex-amination, though one may have to keep an eye open for the horse¬drawn Fiakers which park along the north wall, as their drivers are understandably indifferent to such researches.

On the corner of the north tower is a monument erected to the memory of one Lorenz Zimmerman, who, like thousands of other Viennese, perished in the plague of 1574. A typical memento mori, it is a gruesome rendering of a skeleton. Further along, there is a crucifix in a barred niche below which stairs lead down into a rather sinister darkness and the catacombs beneath the church. Today, the catacombs may be reached from inside the cathedral, but many Viennese pause here to kneel and say a quick prayer in front of the crucifix on their way to the shops.

Just beyond this is the fine Gothic pulpit from which in 1481 St Capristanus first called for the destruction of the infidel, a cry taken up with zeal by the later Habsburgs. At the corner there is a side door to the cathedral in front of which are displayed photographs of the burnt-out shell of St Stephen's after Allied bombing during the war. Such de¬vastation might suggest that one is about to enter one of those pitifully bleak, over-restored churches often to be found in German cities. Fortunately the craftsmen here did their work with rare skill, and the gloomy darkness of the interior seems completely medieval even to the most discerning eye. The glass was of course destroyed, but rather than replace it with some expressionist design of the fifties, the Viennese wisely chose to use simple coloured panes.


What to see at the Cathedral in Vienna

To the right as one enters, behind an iron gate, is the bishops' memorial chapel; to the left, an undistinguished monument to the raising of the Turkish siege in 1683. But this unpromising beginning soon leads to more rewarding sights. Exploring the treasures of the choir and its side chapels poses a dilemma, as everything to the east of where one now stands is barred by a metal chain. Unless one is prepared to wait for a tour at the west end of the cathedral, pay a small fee and enjoy a guide who recites dates like a computer, there is no alternative but to slip under this chain. Even at the height of the tourist season, it will be at least fifteen minutes before one is discovered. This is more than time enough to inspect the east end, something one can do in any English cathedral where these iniquitous practices have not been introduced.

The south chapel contains the magnificent sarcophagus of Emperor Frederick I I, the first Habsburg to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor. It is surprisingly self-effacing, but amid the impressive red and white marble carvings and thirty-two coats of arms can be seen the letters A.E.I.O.U., a motto indelibly associated with Frederick and standing for 'Austria erit in orbe ultima' ('Austria will outlast all other powers'), or 'Austria est imperare orbi universo' ('It is for Austria to rule the entire world').

The choir itself is chiefly notable for the fine late fifteenth-century light-wood Renaissance stalls, containing excellent portraits of bishops. The Baroque painting above by Tobias Pock, however, scarcely merits a glance. The small north choir is rich in monuments, including ones of Duke Rudolf IV and his duchess, Catherine. Although Rudolf reigned only from 1358 to 1365 he enlarged St Stephen's and founded the University of Vienna, which explains why the red banners marked 'Univer¬sitas' lie on his tomb.

Turning to the nave, perhaps greeting some officious warder about to remove us from this forbidden area with a cheery 'Good morning´, it is time to slip back under the chain and explore the rest of the interior.

One remarkable area is near the third pier from the west end, which features a delightful example of flowing Gothic in the pulpit attributed to Anton Pilgram of Brno in Moravia. The craftsman's portrait is sculptured looking somewhat gravely out of a window in the lattice work. The same face peers out at us from an elaborate organ base on the north wall behind us, in another gorgeous late flowering of Gothic.

Baroque elements

As in many south European churches, there is much grafting of Baroque elements onto Gothic structure to be seen, in general effect less unpleasant than one might expect. The south aisle contains a fine wooden imperial viewing box underneath which stand, quite neglected, some exquisite black wooden stalls of the late 1520S.

For those whose tastes lie in this direction, a tour of the catacombs, where the relics of the emperors are kept, and the bones of thousands of plague victims can be seen, commences opposite.

Before leaving, it only remains to pay one's respects to the greatest general who ever led an Austrian army, Prince Eugen of Savoy, who lies buried in the south aisle chapel at the west end. The soldier who saved Marlborough's life at the battle of Blenheim has a humble grave, but visitors can encounter more spectacular monuments to him in other parts of the city.

Galway City Ireland information and places to visit

The ancient port city of Galway hangs on to a romantic past that has been seasoned as much by myth as by reality. It isn't the glory of the early Gaelic kingdoms that haunts the local folk memory so much as the swashbuckling days of the Spanish Main. It was then that the prevailing south westerlies, speeded tall ships toward Galway from the ports of Spain. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the two places were engaged in a rich, bustling commerce, and the image of noble Spanish hidalgos swaggering through the cobbled streets of Galway still burns bright in the imagination.

Galway city and its Spanish connection

Galway is proud of its medieval Spanish connection, almost to the point of forgetting that the really potent influence in shaping the city was Anglo­Norman. The citizenry sees the hand of Spain everywhere, and indeed some of the old back-street townhouses and courtyards are faintly reminiscent of all things Español. Down near the docks, the celebrated Spanish Arch is an extension of the fortress walls that protected the old city and probably got its name from the Spanish sailors who once frequented the nearby alehouses.

Galway nurtures the fables of a colourful past in other ways. Its most famous legend is that of the mayor who hanged his own son. This archetype of the stern father was one James Lynch Fitzstephen who, in 1493, condemned his son Walter as a murderer. Apparently, Walter had killed a visiting Spaniard for stealing his girlfriend. So popular was Walter throughout Galway that no one could be found to hang him, so the father had to do it himself. A stone memorial window marks the execution spot. Even though gray-bearded historians have debunked this story in modern times, a stone window still stands, and most Galwegians are loyal to the legend.

Christopher Columbus and Galway City Ireland

There's a stronger ring of truth to another much told tale, that of Christopher Columbus discovering Galway before he ever clapped a weathered eye on America. It is believed that he called here and prayed in St. Nicholas's Church en route to the uncharted western seas. The church might be considered an auspicious stopping-off place for any would-be discoverer, because this particular St. Nicholas was the patron saint of sea voyagers.

Whatever the truth of the Columbus story, it is hard to shake the faith of Galway natives in their own notable explorer and saint, Brendan. They and many other Irish people believe that St. Brendan discovered the New World centuries before the Italian upstart. Naturally, Brendan sailed from Galway.

Galway's origins go back long before the 6th-century St. Brendan and Christian times. There were settlements on its river in pagan days. The Irish for Galway is Gaillimh (pronounced Golliv), and legend has it that the name comes from a princess, Gaillimh, who was drowned in the river. Nowadays, the river is called the Corrib, and its surging waters rushing into Galway Bay are the pulsing soul and spirit of the city. In summertime, legions of silver salmon swarm in from the Atlantic feeding grounds in response to the im­memorial spawning call and fight their way upriver to the headwaters where they were born. This natural phenomenon used to be one of the more uplifting sights in Galway, and it still is in a way, though the salmon have been thinned out by pollution and the nets of the factory ships.

The history of Galway City Ireland

It was the Normans, not the Spaniards or anyone else, who developed Galway into a thriving mercantile city. During the 13th century they hop­scotched from Britain to Ireland with the help of a pope and a traitorous Irish prince, and when their armies reached Galway, they quickly subdued the native tribes, taking over the city. They built stout walls around it to keep out the wild Irish - and then, in a matter of decades, became more Irish than the Irish themselves. Much later, in the mid-17th century, Cromwell smashed his iron fist on the city and reinforced the chains of conquest.

Galway became known as the City of the Tribes because of the 14 dynastic merchant families that controlled its wealth and fortune for several centuries. Outside the walls, across the river, the relics of the ancient Irish civilization survived in the fishing village called Claddagh, which spreads out from Nimmo's Pier at the estuary of Galway Bay. Its thatch-roofed cottages have been torn down and replaced by drab, utilitarian homes, but it still manages to retain its identity and remain independent of Galway City.

From the middle of the 19th century until quite recently, Galway was a port for passenger liners plying the Atlantic between the United States and Europe. The passage was not always comfortable. During the potato famine of the 1840s, thousands of starving Irish peasants sailed from Galway to the New World aboard vessels whose abysmal conditions won them the chilling name "coffin ships." Only in recent years has Galway expanded rapidly and become highly industrialized. A recent half-mile-radius extension of the city borders increased the city's population overnight, from 30,000 to 55,000, and a massive urban renewal program in the late 1980s transformed the downtown area. This surge of progress, though, barely affected the leisurely rhythm of life here.

The old charm still lingers, especially in the back streets and alleyways. It is there that, in fanciful moments, a visitor can almost hear the thrum of Spanish guitars and the clack of Castilian castanets.

Places to see in Galway City

Eyre Square - This is the heart of the city and the place visitors usually see first. It once was the Fair Green, where livestock and produce were sold, and is now named after one of the ruling merchant tribes, the Eyres. (Charlotte Bronte got the title of her famous novel when she saw the name Jane Eyre on a gravestone during a visit to Galway.) The original pastoral appearance of the green was destroyed by local authorities in an outrageous act of philistinism during the I 960s, when they poured concrete sidewalks along its edges. The park within the square is named after John F. Kennedy, in memory of his Galway visit. There's a fascinating statue of a quirky gnome of an Irish writer named Padraic a Conaire at the northern end. A splendid cut-stone doorway, of a type seen in the better homes of long ago, also stands in the park, this one from the home of another tribe, the Brownes.

St. Nicholas's Church - This is the place where Columbus is said to have prayed before sailing off to discover America. Originally built by the Anglo-Normans in 1320, it has been greatly altered through the ensuing centuries: It retains its original chancel and is a repository for some striking medieval stone carvings and relics. The three­gabled west front is unparalleled in Ireland. After the reformation, the church became the prize in a tug-of-war between Protestants and Catholics and changed hands a number of times before Cromwell's forces finally secured it for the Protestants. It is also pleasant to wander through the country market set up outside the church on Saturday mornings.

Market St. Lynch Memorial Window - Just up the street from the church, this stone window marks the spot where the mayor of the city, James Lynch Fitzstephen, is said to have hanged his son Walter for murder in 1493. It isn't the actual window through which the luckless lad exited to the next world - this one was carved some 200 years later. The hanging story is a good one but almost certainly untrue.

Market St. Lynch's Castle - The ubiquitous Lynch tribe that gave so many mayors to the city originally lived in this 16th-century building, regarded by many as the finest town castle in all Ireland. It has been lovingly restored and preserved.
Salmon Weir - The centuries-old salmon fishery is below the Salmon Weir Bridge, opposite the new Catholic cathedral. This is a pleasant place to pass an hour in summer watching the salmon on their way up to the spawning grounds.

Catholic Cathedral - On the site of a former jailhouse opposite the Salmon Weir Bridge, this structure, built in the early 1960s, was inspired by Renaissance and other church architecture of the past. It is a large building but not remarkably lovely. Earl'sIsland.
Spanish Arch - The best-known landmark in Galway, the arch was built in 1594 as an addition to the Old Town wall, as well as protection for the docked Spanish ships unloading their wines nearby. Attached to the arch is a museum through which a traveller can climb to the top of the arch and look across the Corrib to Claddagh. Beside Wolfe Tone Bridge, where the river enters the sea.

Claddagh - This district was originally a fishing village where the native Irish clung to their old culture in defiance of the usurping Anglo-Normans within the walls. Claddagh people no longer fish, nor speak Irish, but they still proudly maintain a sense of separateness from the city. The famous Claddagh ring - two hands clasping a heart surmounted by a crown - was fashioned by local goldsmiths as the traditional wedding band. Cross the Corrib at Wolfe Tone Bridge to reach Claddagh.

Salthill - Galway's seaside resort is really part of the city. Salthill has three sandy beaches on Galway Bay, but invariably the weather is hostile to sunbathing and surfing. When the weather is good, swimming is safe and there's no crowding. The Leisureland complex that dominates the seafront has a huge heated indoor swimming pool and Coney Island-style amusements for children and adults. Southwest of Galway, Leisureland is reachable on foot or by frequent buses from Eyre Square.

Franciscan Abbey - Built in 1836, the abbey is on the site of a 13th-century friary that was founded by the De Burgos (Burkes), the first Norman Lords of Galway. St. Francis St. University College - The original building, completed in 1849, was modelled in neo-Gothic style on some of the colleges at Oxford. Built as a non-denominational institution, it was once condemned as godless by the Catholic bishops, who forbade Catholics to attend, but the ban was ignored. A small university, it has a friendly, unstuffy atmosphere; someone is always willing to show visitors around. Main entrance to the campus is off University Rd.

Generally, Galway is a quiet place, but it does have its moments. In Autumn it lets down its hair and stages the closest approximation of la dolce vita that anyone will find in Ireland. This is the Galway Oyster Festival, held every year over a very long and vertiginous weekend in September.

A most sybaritic occasion, it has many more temptations than the oysters everyone ostensibly comes to eat. The organized events of the festival are rather expensive and must be booked in advance. It's also advisable to reserve a hotel room, especially at any of the other better hotels in Galway. Events of the festival, from Friday night to Sunday morning, include a reception and dinner, festival banquet, lunch, oyster tasting, and recuperative Irish coffee "morning after.”

The Galway Arts Festival, held for 10 days in July, has developed into one of the most innovative and exciting occasions in Irish life, attracting hosts of young people from all over Ireland and abroad. It features a brilliant array of Irish and international plays, musical events, and art exhibitions, as well as a week-long carnival and all sorts of fringe happenings.

Finally, don't leave Galway without visiting the Aran Islands and see if you can take part in one of those medieval banquets in Dunguaire Castle.
Southern Ireland is one of the most beautiful places to visit in Europe, and the best way to get around is to hire a car at your airport in Ireland. Car hire can be pre-booked to save you time and money when you arrive, and leaving you free to enjoy your stay in Galway City, Dublin or any other destination in Ireland. You can find cheap deals for flights and accommodation in Galway City and Dublin, and whatever you want to see in Ireland, you can book it before you go.

Things to see and places to go in Dublin

Whatever you enjoy doing on holiday, you will find it in Dublin. From the typical irish pubs with live entertainment, and a vast range of cultural activities, and top class accommodation, Dublin has it all, and it is easy to see why so many visitors keep flocking back to this vibrant city.

A major urban improvement is the rejuvenation of Grafton Street as a pedestrian shopping area, with brick walkways, benches, and plants. The shops along Grafton and nearby have perked up, with smart new facades and signs. Besides sightseeing, a visitor should sample Dublin's abundant cultural offerings.

But the true focal point of Dubliners' social life is the pub, and it is there that a visitor must go to find it. Dublin can be a comfortable, "down home" place to visit, so slow down and enjoy it. It has an endearing earthiness, a quality that inspired James Joyce to refer to his native city in off-colour, though affectionate, terms as "strumpet city in the sunset" and "dear, dirty Dublin."

Central Dublin
Central Dublin is very compact. Since traffic can move slowly, by far the best way to see the city is on foot. Making full use of Dublin's splendid, sign posted Tourist Trail, the determined sightseer should set off on foot to see and experience as much of Dublin as time allows. Walk the wide Georgian squares and avenues, meander down the cobblestone lanes near the Liffey Quays, stroll through the sylvan paths of St. Stephen's Green or along bustling Grafton Street - Dublin's shoppers' paradise - and stop at Bewley's (78-79 Grafton St.) for a cup of coffee.

Merrion Square Dublin

This is the loveliest of Dublin's Georgian squares, a study in balance and elegance that evokes the graciousness of a vanished age. Note particularly the variety of fanlights on doorways. At No.1, the young Oscar Wilde lived with his celebrated parents, the surgeon Sir William Wills Wilde and poetess Speranza; No. 42 was the home of Sir Jonah Barrington, 18th-century barrister and raconteur; at No. 58 lived Daniel O'Connell, the "Liberator" who won Catholic emancipation in 1829; No. 70 was the home of tragic Sheridan Le Fanu, author of sinister tales such as Uncle Silas and Through a Glass Darkly (after his wife's death in 1858, he shut himself up there, appearing only after nightfall to walk in the shadows of Merrion Square); at No. 82 lived William Butler Yeats, poet and Nobel Prize winner. Today, the only house in the square used as a private dwelling is No. 71, where well-known coutiere Sybil Connolly has her home and studio.

The Earl of Leinster

When young Lord Kildare, Earl of Leinster, chose to build a mansion here in 1745, all of fashionable Dublin protested, for at that time the north side of the city was the fashionable side. Undaunted, he went ahead with his plan, asserting prophetically, "Where I go, fashion will follow." The house Lord Kildare built is said to resemble the White House, whose architect, James Hoban of Carlow, studied in Dublin after the completion of Leinster House. The building was purchased in the 19th Century by the Royal Dublin Society, and in 1921 the Parliament of the new Irish Free State chose the building as its meeting place. Leinster House continues to be the meeting place of the Dail (House of Representatives) and Seanad (Senate).

The National Museum Dublin

When Leinster House belonged to the Royal Dublin Society, it became the nucleus of a complex of cultural buildings - the National Gallery, the National Library, the Museum of Natural History, and the National Museum. These all are worth visiting, but the National Museum especially should not be missed. Its collection of gold objects dating from the Bronze Age to early Christian times almost is without parallel in Western Europe. No admission charge. Kildare Street Genealogical Office and Heraldic Museum -Formerly in Dublin Castle, this is the domain of Ireland's chief herald, the ideal starting point for an ancestry hunt.




St. Stephen's Green Dublin

Not far from Merrion Square lies St. Stephen:s Green, the loveliest of Dublin's many public parks. Its 22 acres contain gardens, a waterfall, and an ornamental lake. In summer, it's an excellent place to sit and watch working Dublin take its lunch; bands play on the bandstand in July and August.

Mansion House Dublin

Dublin preceded London in building a Mansion House for its lord mayor in 1715. In the Round Room, the Declaration of Irish Independence was adopted in 1919, and the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 was signed here. The Round Room usually is open to visitors.

Trinity College Dublin

Dawson Street descends to meet Trinity College, the oldest university in Ireland, founded by Elizabeth I of England on the site of the 12th-century Monastery of All Hallows. Alumni of the college include Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, Jonathan Swift, Bishop Berkeley (pronounced Barklee) - who also lent his name to Berkeley in California - William Congreve, Thomas Moore, Sheridan Le Fanu, Oscar Wilde, and J. P. Donleavy, to name but a few. No trace of the original Elizabethan structure remains; the oldest surviving part of the college dates from 1700. The Long Room, Trinity's famous library, is the longest single-chamber library in existence. It contains a priceless collection of 800,000 volumes and 3,000 ancient manuscripts and papyri. The library's chief treasure is the Book of Kells, an 8th-Century manuscript transcription of the four gospels described as the "most beautiful book in the world."

Parliament House Dublin

Facing Trinity College is the monumental Parliament House, now the Bank of Ireland. Built in 1729 and regarded as one of the finest examples of the architecture of its period, this was the first of the great series of 18th-century public buildings in Dublin. As its name implies, it was erected to house the Irish Parliament in the century that saw the birth of Home Rule.).

Dublin Castle

Dame Street leads westward from College Green toward the 'older part of the city, where the early Viking and Norman settlers established themselves. Castles have gone up and down on the site of the present castle. A Celtic rath (a medieval earthen fort) was almost certainly followed by a wooden Viking fortress, and this in turn was supplanted by the great stone castle erected by John of England in the 13th century. The castle was for 400 years the centre of English rule in Ireland; for much of this time it had as grim a reputation as the Tower of London. Although the present building is essentially 18th century, one of the four towers that flanked the original moated castle survives as the Record Tower. The 15th-century Bedford Tower was the state prison; the Georgian State Apartments, formerly the residence of the English viceroys, were beautifully restored between 1950 and 1963 and now are used for state functions. Bedford Tower, the Chapel Royal, and the State Apartments can be visited for an admission charge.

Christ Church Cathedral Dublin

Not far from Dublin Castle, the massive shape of Christ Church Cathedral crowns the hill on which the ancient city stood. Founded in 1038 by Viking King Sitric Silkenbeard of Dublin, Christ Church was demolished in the 12th century and rebuilt by the Norman Richard Gilbert de Clare (Strongbow), who is buried within its walls. The cruciform building has been much restored through the centuries, but the beautiful pointed nave and the wonderful stonework remain virtually unchanged. These walls have witnessed many dramatic scenes in the course of Irish history. Christ Church today is the Church of Ireland (Protestant) cathedral for the diocese of Dublin. The vaulted crypt remains one of the largest in Ireland. In front of this cathedral Dubliners traditionally gather to ring in the New Year. The cathedral and crypt are open.

St. Audeon's Arch and the City Walls Dublin

The 13th-century church of St. Audeon is Dublin's oldest parish church. It was founded by early Norman settlers, who gave it the name St. Ouen, or Audeon, after the patron saint of their native Rouen. Close to the church is a flight of steps leading down to St. Audeon's Arch, the sole surviving gateway of the medieval city walls.

St. Patrick's Cathedral Dublin

Christ Church stood within the old walled city. John Comyn, one of its 12th-century archbishops, felt that while he remained under municipal jurisdiction he could not achieve the temporal power for which he thirsted. Accordingly, he left the city walls and built a fine palace within a stone's throw of Christ Church. Today St. Patrick's is the national cathedral of the Church of Ireland. By the 19th century both cathedrals were in a state of considerable disrepair. Henry Roe, a distiller, came to the aid of Christ Church, restoring it at his own expense; Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness of the famous brewing family came to the assistance of St. Patrick's - hence the saying in Dublin that "Christ Church was restored with glasses, St. Patrick's with pints!"
The early English interior of St. Patrick's is very beautiful; the nave is the longest in Ireland. The cathedral's particular fascination, however, lies in its wealth of monuments, especially the Geraldine Door, the Cork Memorial, and the monument to Dame St. Leger. The greatest interest of all, though, is in the long association with St. Patrick's of Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels and dean of the cathedral for 32 years. Within these walls he is buried, beside his loving Stella. On a slab near the entrance is carved the epitaph he composed for himself, which Yeats described as the greatest epitaph in literature: "He lies where furious indignation can no longer rend his heart." Open to visitors.
The Guinness Brewery Dublin

Founded in 1759 by Arthur Guinness with a mere £100, Guinness's today is the largest exporting stout brewery in the world. The former Guinness Hop Store, on Crane St. adjacent to the main brewery, was once the storage building for the ingredients for the world-famous dark stout, and the aroma remains. Now it is a public hall showcasing traveling displays, art shows, technological works, and contemporary arts. The visitors' center shows an audiovisual presentation about the making of the famous brew, complete with free samples. Also of note are the Guinness Museum and the Cooper's Museum.

Royal Hospital Dublin

One of Ireland's oldest public buildings, this 17th-century treasure was restored for IR£20 million and reopened in 1985 on its 300th anniversary. Originally built as a home for aged veterans, it is now Ireland's official National Centre for Culture and the Arts. Displays range from National Museum pieces to travelling art exhibitions from as far away as China. The restoration of the Grand Hall/dining room has been rated as one of Europe's finest achievements of the century. Also used for public concerts, recitals, and lectures (check the Dublin newspapers). Surrounding the building are 50 acres of grounds, including an 18th-century formal garden, a courtyard, a sculpture park, and Bully's Acre, the resting place of many 11th-century Irish chieftains.

Four Courts of Justice Dublin

Almost across the river from Guinness's lies the stately Four Courts of Justice, dating from the apogee of the 18th Century. The building was begun by Thomas Cooley and completed by James Gandon, the greatest of all the Georgian architects. Court sittings (Supreme and High) are open to the public.

St. Michan's Church Dublin

Not far from the Four Courts is St. Michan's, a 17th-century church built on the site of a 10th-Century Viking church. The 18th-century organ is said to have been played by Handel when he was in Dublin for the first public performance of "Messiah." Of more immediate interest, perhaps, is the extraordinary crypt, with its remarkable preservative atmosphere; Bodies have lain here for centuries without decomposing, and you can, if you feel so inclined, shake the hand of an 8-foot-tall Crusader!

Irish Whiskey Corner Dublin

With so many pubs on every corner of the city, it's no wonder that Irish Whiskey, like Guinness stout, is big business in Ireland. The story of the legendary liquid, known in Gaelic as uisce beatha (the water of life), is illustrated in this former distillery warehouse. One-hour tours include a short introductory audio­visual presentation, followed by a visit to an exhibition area with photography archives, distillery memorabilia, and a whiskey-making demonstration. The tour ends at a pub­style "tasting room," where visitors can sample the various brands being brewed today.

Moore Street Dublin

Near the historic General Post Office (2 blocks west of Henry Street) is Moore Street. Here, among the fruit and flower sellers, the true voice of Dublin is audible -lively, warm, voluble, speaking anEnglish that is straight Sean O'Casey.

Municipal Gallery of Modern Art Dublin

Beyond the Garden of Remembrance (a memorial to those who died for Irish freedom), on the north side of Parnell Square, is Charlemont House. Lord Charlemont, for whom the house was designed by Sir William Chambers in 1764, was a great patron of the arts; it is fitting that his house became, in recent times, the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art. The gallery should not be missed; it has an outstanding collection of Impressionist paintings, and the works of more recent artists such as Picasso, Utrillo, and Bonnard are well represented, to say nothing of such prominent Irish painters as Sir William Orpen, John B. Yeats (the poet's father), and Jack Yeats (the poet's brother).

Abbey Theatre Dublin

Alas, the original Abbey Theatre, founded by Yeats and Lady Gregory on the site of the old city morgue, is no more. In 1951, at the close of a performance of O'Casey's Plough and the Stars - a play that ends with Dublin blazing in the aftermath of rebellion - the theatre itself caught fire and was burned to the ground. The new Abbey, designed by Michael Scott - who was one of the country's foremost 20th-century architects - opened in 1966 on the site of the original building. The lobby, which can be seen daily except Sundays, contains interesting portraits of those connected with the theatre´s early successes.

Custom House Dublin

This masterpiece of Georgian architecture adorns the north bank of the Liffey, to the east of O'Connell St. It was the chef d'oeuvre of James Gandon and is one of the finest buildings of its kind in Europe. Now occupied by government offices and closed to the public, it should nonetheless be seen at close range: The carved riverheads that form the keystones of the arches and entrances are splendid.

Phoenix Park Dublin

Northwest of the city centre, this is the largest enclosed urban park in the world. Within its walls are the residences of the President of the Republic and the US Ambassador. The park covers 1,760 acres, beautifully planted with a great variety of trees. Among the attractions are the lovely People's Gardens, a herd of fallow deer the horse-race course and the Zoological Gardens. DublIn Zoo is said to be the most beautiful zoo in Europe; it also has a most impressive collection of animals and holds several records for lion breeding. The park and zoo are open daIly.

Chester Beatty Library Dublin

Founded by an Amencan-born, naturalIzed Bntlsh resident in Ireland, this library is considered to be the most valuable and representative private collection of Oriental manuscripts and miniatures in the world. The "copper millionaire with a heart of gold," Chester Beatty willed his marvellous lIbrary to the people of Dublin.

Malahide Castle Dublin

In a north city suburb of DublIn, Malahlde Castle (now open to the public), was for 8 centuries the home of the Talbots of Malahide. Magnificently furnished in mostly 18th-century style with part of the very valuable Natlonal Portrait Collection on view, it is well worth a visit. Also on display is the Fry Model Railway, one of the largest modern railway exhibits in the world, which includes 300 model trains, trams, and items of Irish railway history dating from 1834. Admission charge.

Newbridge House and Park Dublin

Built in 1740, this country mansion is full of memorabilia of the Cobbe family, including original hand-carved furniture collected through the years, portraits, memoirs, daybooks, a museum of world travels, and an extensive doll collection. Downstairs, visitors can view a kitchen and laundry room from 1760, complete with ancient implements. The wooded grounds (365 acres) have picnic areas and walking trails. Five miles north of Dublin Airport and 12 miles from the city centre, Newbridge can be comfortably combined with an excursion to nearby Malahide Castle.

The Boyne Valley Ireland

The Boyne Valley is one of Ireland's most storied and evocative sites, and it makes an easy and interesting day trip. Leave Dublin by the Navan road, passing through Dunshaughlin (which takes its name from a church founded by St. Seachnall, a companion of St. Patrick). Six miles south of Navan, signposted to the left, is the Hill of Tara. Although only some grassy mounds and earthworks recall a splendid past, it is impossible to remain unmoved by the site's history: This is Royal Tara, where the High Kings of Ireland were crowned on the Lia Fail (Stone of Destiny) before time began. And it was here, at the tribes' great triennial Feis of Tara, that laws were enacted and revised. Now, as Moore wrote in his immortal song, "No more to chiefs and ladles bnght / The harp of Tara swells / The chord alone that breaks at night / Its tale of ruin tells."

Returning to the Navan road, you will pass the striking ruins of 16th-century Athlumney Castle on the east bank of the Boyne.

Continue through Donaghmore, with its remains of a 12th-century church and a round tower. Nearby, below the Boyne Bridge, lies Log na Ri (Hollow of the King), where people once swam their herds of cattle ceremoniously across the river to protect them from the "little people" and from natural disasters.
The village of Slane lies on one of the loveliest stretches of the Boyne. There are some delightful Georgian houses, but the history of this small town goes back far beyond the 18th century.

On the hill that overlooks Slane, St. Patrick lit the paschal fire on Holy Saturday, AD 433, and drew upon himself the wrath of the high king's druids. Patrick emerged victorious from the ensuing confrontation, and Christianity began its reign in Ireland. On the slopes of the hill are the remains of an ancient earthen fort and the ruins of a 16th-century church. Apart from archaeological interest, the climb up Slane Hill is well worth the effort - rewarding the energetic with fine views across the tranquil Boyne Valley to Trim and Drogheda. Just outside the town lies the estate of Slane Castle, a 19th-century castellated mansion in which the present occupant, Lord Mountcharles, has opened a fine restaurant.

Downstream from Slane is Brugh na Boinne (the Palace of the Boyne), a vast necropolis more than 4,000 years old. Here, beneath a chain of tumuli, Kings of Ireland were laid to rest in passage graves of remarkable complexity. The tumuli of Dowth, Knowth, and Newgrange in particular are of major interest, both for theIr extent and the amazing diversity of their sculptured ornamentation. Newgrange is one of the finest passage graves in all of Western Europe, and it has been opened to the public. A permanent archaeological exhibition and guided tours are available.

Farther down the Boyne Valley is Drogheda, an ancient town that has witnessed many dramatic scenes in the course of Irish history, most of which involve the contention of Royalists and Puritans for the English throne. Oliver Cromwell burned the city to the ground during a vicious siege in the 1600s, and James II was defeated by William of Orange on July 12, 1690. Reminders of Drogheda's past Include the 13th-century St. Laurence's Gate, the only survivors of the original ten gates in this once-walled city; the ruins of 13th-century St. Mary's Abbey; the Norman motte-and-bailey of Millmount and the fine Millmount Museum; and St. Peter's Church, where the head of St. Oliver Plunkett, martyred ArchbIshop of Armagh, is enshrined.

Five miles north of Drogheda is Monasterboice, an ancient monastic settlement noteworthy for one of the most perfect high crosses in Ireland - the intricately carved 10th-century Cross of Muireadach. Southwest of Monasterboice are the impressive ruins of Mellifont Abbey. Dating from 1142, this was the first Cister­cian foundation in Ireland and heralded a whole new style of ecclesiastical architecture. Note especially the remains of the gate house and the octagonal lavabo.

With a wealth of historical and cultural sites, Dublin offers visitors the ultimate holiday experience. Dublin accommodation includes boutique hotels, guesthouses, b&bs, five star luxury hotels, romantic hotels and some incredible attractions and places to visit, and the best way to explore Dublin city and surrounding districts is to pre-book a hire car from Dublin Airport and take your time to look around. Dublin pubs are famous for their ´craik´ and you can find entertainment, live music and some of the finest guiness in the world in Grafton Street, Dublin, plus a host of fabulous restaurants and cafés.

The history of Dublin Ireland

Now one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe, Dublin attracts visitors from all over the world who come to enjoy the relaxed and fun atmosphere of Ireland´s capital city.

Dublin is a friendly city steeped in a history often troubled, sometimes splendid; a city of wide Georgian streets, elegant squares, magnificent doorways; a city of memorable sunsets that bathe the 18th-century red brick facades until the houses seem to glow with their own fire and the windows seem made of gold; a city of ancient churches and cathedrals thrusting their hallowed spires and towers against the skyline; a city where the English language acquires a unique dimension and where the dark, creamy-headed Guinness stout flows abundantly in companionable pubs.

This is a city like no other European capital, set like a jewel in the sweep of Dublin Bay. Behind, to the south, rise the Dublin hills and the Wicklow Mountains. Through the city the river Liffey - James Joyce's Anna Livia Plurabelle - wends its leisurely way to the sea, spanned as it passes through Dublin by 11 bridges.

Once there was only one bridge. Indeed, it was not so much a bridge as a mere ford in the river, and it stood approximately where the Father Matthew Bridge stands today. It was built by the first Celtic inhabitants of what is now Dublin. When they came here, we cannot be sure; what is certain is that, by AD 140, they were well established on this site. The Celts themselves probably referred to the spot by a name that endures to this day - the official Gaelic Baile Atha Cliath (town of the ford of the hurdles).

Dublin and the Vikings

It was not, however, until the coming of the Vikings in the 9th century that Dublin as we now know it began to take shape. The old Celtic settlement had at no time been a place of national importance; its significance was as a ford of the Liffey en route to the ancient royal capital of Tara. In AD 837, 65 Viking longboats sailed into Dublin Harbour and up the mouth of the river Liffey. These early Viking settlers established themselves a little downstream from the old Celtic settlement, on a spot where the Poddle, which now flows underground, entered the Liffey, causing it to form a dark pool, or dubhlinn.

The Vikings referred to their settlement by these two Gaelic words, and the anglicized version became the city's modern English name. Dublin rapidly became the focal point of the Viking invasion of Ireland. Then, as the Vikings began to see that trading was ultimately more profitable than plunder, and as they began to settle and intermarry in their new homeland, Dublin became a major centre for their extensive European trade. Not long after their arrival, they were converted to Christianity, and in 1034 they erected a cathedral, which became the nucleus of modern Christ Church. The cathedral stood in the centre of Viking Dublin and allows us to place the ancient city accurately. Just over 3 centuries after the coming of the Vikings, new invaders swept Ireland. In 1169 the first contingent of Normans landed on the beach of Bannow, in County Wexford. Two years later, the powerful Baron Richard Gilbert de Clare, otherwise known as Strongbow, arrived at the gates of Dublin with 1,000 men. The city was taken by storm; its Viking king and inhabitants were forced to flee. Thereafter Dublin became the centre of the English conquest, as it had become the centre of the Viking conquest.

Dublin Castle

Not long afterward, the city was fortified by Dublin Castle, built not far from the old Viking cathedral. The cathedral had been taken over by Strongbow and a new and larger edifice had been erected in its place. The city walls were built along with the castle. (Their remains can be seen at St. Audeon's Arch, below Christ Church.) Thus medieval Dublin began to take shape, a small area surrounded by walls. In shape and in size Dublin did not alter greatly until the arrival of a new viceroy, or king's representative, in 1662 heralded Dublin's rise to a definitive national importance. Dublin, under James Butler, Duke of Ormonde, became and remained the central arena for Ireland's social, political, and cultural life.

Butler, believing that the stability of a government should be reflected in public works, began municipal improvements almost immediately. The solitary, medieval Dublin Bridge was joined by four new bridges across the river; Phoenix Park (to this day the largest enclosed urban park in the world) was walled and several new streets were built. Dublin's importance as a city and as a seaport increased enormously in the late 17th century.

18th Century Dublin

In the 18th century, however, Dublin truly flourished, as it became one of the most brilliant and sparkling capitals in all of Europe. The strong movement toward parliamentary independence that took place at this time was reflected in the splendid Parliament House (now the Bank of Ireland in College Green), commenced in 1729, the first in a series of great public buildings. Extensive rebuilding was carried out on Dublin Castle and Trinity College. The Wide Streets Commission was set up. It was as if the city were proudly preparing for the unprecedented position of importance it would occupy when, in 1782, parliamentary independence was conceded to Ireland by the British Parliament.

Great buildings followed one another in dizzying succession - Leinster House, the Royal Exchange, the Mansion House, the Four Courts, the Custom House. Irish classical architecture, in all its gravity, beauty, and balance, reached full maturity. It flowered in public buildings and private houses, spacious squares and elegant streets. This was Georgian Dublin (various King Georges sat on the British throne in the period): the Dublin of Henry Grattan, Oliver Goldsmith, Jonathan Swift, Bishop Berkeley and Edmund Burke, David Garrick, and Peg Woffington. Handel himself conducted the world premiere of his "Messiah" in this glittering city, whose centre was concentrated in the area between Dublin Castle and the Parliament House.

Architecturally, Dublin reached its zenith in the 18th century. Later, its brilliance would be sculpted in the written word rather than in stone. In the 19th century, with the dismantling of the Parliament, Dublin's political and social life suffered a blow from which it was not to recover easily. By contrast, its literary life began to flower, for two great literary movements were born in Dublin - the Gaelic League and the Irish literary renaissance.

Between them, the two movements revived and romanticized the early legends and history of Ireland. The literary renaissance - spearheaded by William Butler Yeats, Lady Augusta Gregory, Douglas Hyde, and John Millington Synge, to name but a few - placed a splendid and indelible mark on 20th-century English literature. (Equally renowned are Irish or Ireland-born writers not directly associated with the Irish literary renaissance, such as Samuel Beckett, who was born in Dublin in 1906 and won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1969; George Bernard Shaw, who wrote in England but was born in Dublin; and the Irish playwright Brendan Behan.) The movement found its greatest expression in the creation of the Abbey Theatre, associated forever with the brilliant plays of Sean O'Casey. For many years the Abbey was the most famous theatre in the world.

The Easter Rebellion of 1916

The Gaelic League had more popular appeal; with its dream of the restoration of the Gaelic language and the re-establishment of a separate Irish cultural nation, it provided a great deal of the inspiration for the Easter Rebellion of 1916.

This uprising, concentrated in Dublin, sparked the 5-year War of Independence, which culminated in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 (whereby Ireland gained the status of free state). The signing of the treaty was followed by civil war in 1922-23, during which many buildings that had escaped damage in 1916 suffered badly. Today, happily, all the heirlooms of the 18th century have been restored to their original grandeur.

Dublin today, with a population of 1 million, is far larger than it has been at any other stage of its history. Nevertheless, it still is an eminently walkable city. The crossroads of medieval and 18th-century Dublin remain the centre of interest. Within a half-mile radius of the Bank of Ireland on College Green lie the cathedrals, the museums, Dublin Castle, the great Georgian public buildings, the parks, and the shops. All are neatly enclosed by the Royal Canal to the north and the Grand Canal to the south.


Modern Dublin

Thanks to the Dublin Millennium celebrations in 1988, the downtown area of the city now enjoys a number of permanent enhancements, including 10 new sculptures by modern Irish crafts persons. The most notable pieces include a freestanding "liberty bell" in St. Patrick's Cathedral Park, a replica of a Viking ship on Essex Quay, and a double arch on a traffic island in Merrion Row, near St. Stephen's Green. In the heart of the city on O'Connell Street there also now is an elaborate fountain, with 40 spouts, designed to represent the course of the River Liffey. The river itself is represented by a larger-than-life sculpture of a reclining female nude, Anna Livia.

Dublin has enjoyed a tense but intriguing history, which has resulted in a vibrant city with a wide range of attractions for visitors. Dublin may not be the cheapest city to stay in, but you can still find cheaper places to stay including bed and breakfast accommodation and guesthouses just outside Dublin city centre, and some of the best Irish pubs, restaurants and live entertainment in Ireland. Whether you are looking for 5-star luxury or a cheap weekend away, you will find accommodation, hotels, guesthouses and b&b´s to suit your budget and requirements. Budget airlines fly to Dublin from most UK airports, including Ryanair and Easyjet, and you can pre-book cheap car hire at Dublin Airport before you fly to save money and delays.

Amsterdam information

One of the most visited cities in Europe, Amsterdam offers visitors a range of diverse and fascinating attractions which keep tourists flocking back for more.
Amsterdam is a remarkable mixture - a capital without a government (the latter is 40 minutes down the road in The Hague); a city of canals and houseboats where the bicycle is king; a mecca of art, where the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh collection vie with the red light district as prime tourist attractions; prim plant­filled suburban homes contrasting with city centre sex shops and gay bars; a gourmet's delight, with anything from traditional raw herring to an Indonesian rijsttafel on the menu.

Amsterdam – a popular tourist city

Along with London, Paris and Rome, Amsterdam is one of Europe's most popular tourist cities thanks certainly, to the warm-hearted welcome its inhabitants extend to foreigners but, above all, to the picturesque Golden Age look of the town's central canal area.
This area is a unique l7th Century museum, often called the Venice of the North. Row upon row of gabled houses lean crazily against one another along a network of tree-lined canals. Vistas of venerable churches stretch beyond white wooden drawbridges, narrow cobbled streets and myriads of barges.

And this is the way City Hall likes it. The Golden Age character is preserved by statute. At last count, 7,000 buildings were classified as protected monuments. Complete 17th century residential areas are renovated, rather than replaced with office blocks. No excuses there's even an official yard where surplus old doors and window frames can be purchased, to replace wood wormed or irreparable originals.

A negative side to the city has been growing; for sure a severe housing shortage has created a whole population of squatters. The tolerant city's violence has greatly increased. The drug problem has reached heady proportions, and graffiti has been scrawled all over Amsterdam's once clean and tidy walls, which is a familiar problem with most of today´s major cities. Amsterdam will take it all in its stride, and find solutions, reasonable and equitable, like it always has.

The history of Amsterdam

Frisians and other primitive tribes are scattered throughout the region. Franks, Saxons and war like Germanic tribes invaded the area in the 5th Century A.D, largely eclipsing the tenuous Christian influence of the Roman Empire. As they died out, the Netherlands developed into a loose amalgam of small states ruled variously by counts, dukes and bishops. One group, the Water Landers built a settlement on a sandbank where the River Amstel flows into the sea. They constructed a dam to prevent flooding. The settlement became known as Amstelre Damme.

In 1275, Count Floris V granted privileges to the local citizenry. It is from this date that Amsterdammers traditionally count the founding of their city. After a miracle occured, Amsterdam became a place of pllgrimage for Christians of the middle Ages. Commerce increased.

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, introduced the Inquisition to the Netherlands realms in the 1520s. His heir, Philip II of Spain, pursued his father's anti Reformation policy in order to retain his temporal power.
The struggle for independence began in earnest, with Prince William (dubbed the Silent) of the House of Orange leading the Dutch rebellion. In 1579, the Treaty of Utrecht between the seven Protestant provinces north of the Rhine estranged the southern provinces. The split later lead to the separate existence of the Netherlands and Belgium. During the 17th century, The Dutch Golden Age flowered in the Netherlands.

Merchants, scientists, artists and craftsmen thrived In the Renaissance atmosphere. The Dutch East Indies Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagme ) expanded into a powerful commercial monopoly establishing trading posts throughout the Far East, Africa and Australia. The Treaties of The Hague and of Westphalia in 1648 (marking the end of the Thirty Years War in Europe) gained more territory for the Dutch. The independent state of the Netherlands, almost as it stands today, is internationally recognized.

Dutch fortunes in the 18th and 19th Centuries

Dutch fortunes declined as French and British influences began to increase. Napoleon's armies overran the United Provinces in 1795 and the Netherlands were annexed by France. Independence came in the early 19th century, as Napoleon's fortunes began to turn. Prince William of Orange was proclaimed king. New houses, museums and schools were built and Canals were improved.

Land was reclaimed from the tidal Zuyder Zee area in a mammoth project that transformed it into a freshwater lake enclosed by a 19 mile-long dike.Germany invaded Holland in 1940 and five years of bitter resistance and hardship followed. Queen Wilhelmina, exiled in London, broadcasted messages to her people, bolstering their valiant will to survive as an independent nation.

Post-war developments included a highly advanced welfare system and vigorous support for the European Economic Community. Despite the unemployment problem, as in neighbouring countries, the Dutch economy continues to flourish.

Things to do in Amsterdam

The one-hour canal tour is a must. It's the best introduction to the city and shows you Amsterdam in a nutshell - historic and charming, pragmatic and business like and always with a touch of liberalism that borders on the bizarre.

Singel, the inner canal, was once the city's fortified boundary. Look out for No.7, a real oddity,and the narrowest house in Amsterdam. It's only as wide as its front door and is jammed between two 17th-century buildings. Three bridges down, at the junction with Oude Leliestraat, note the iron-barred windows of a quaint old jail set into the bridge itself and just above water level. Approachable only by water, it's said to have been used to keep drunks quiet overnight.

From the Singel, the town spread outwards in the early 1600s to Herengracht. This was the No. I canal on which to live during the city's Golden Age. The wealthiest merchants vied with each other to build the widest homes, the most elaborate gables, and the most impressive front entrance steps. The patrician houses are still here in all their glory, though most are now too big for private residence and are occupied by banks and offices.

Keizersgracht was named after Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, whose realm also included the Netherlands. The houses on this canal are not quite so grand as on Heren gracht, but still charming and solidly middle-class .
Prinsengracht, the last main canal of the horse-shoe, is much more down-to-earth, with smaller homes and many warehouses still in their original condition. The ubiquitous Amsterdam hoisting beam is still in daily use by the warehouse men as they haul goods from the cobbled street below up past a vertical succession of gaping wooden doorways.
Looking around you from your canal boat seat, you'll see a kaleidoscopic jumble of houseboats like nothing else on earth. The 2,000 plus house­boats range from luxury living to hippy rafts, from a cats' home to a floating pottery.

Only about half are actually licensed to moor.
Because the central part of Amsterdam is relatively compact, it's also easy to visit on foot. A good idea is to split the centre into four sections and cover one at a time.

Discover the city of Amsterdam

South-West Section Leidseplein (plein square) is the site of the old city gate on the road to Leiden. Today, the gate, the markets and the carriages have gone, and in their place is a multitude of restaurants and sandwich shops, outdoor cafes and cinemas, discotheques, nightclubs and bars.
The North West side of the square is dominated by the Stadsschouwburg (Municipal Theatre) with its pillared entrance. Built in 1894 to replace an earlier edifice which had burnt down, it now houses the Dutch Public Theatre, National Opera and National Ballet.

The American Hotel, virtually next door to the theatre, is something of a city tradition. A building full of character, begun in 1880, it has a magnificent Jugendstil restaurant, protected by the authorities as an architectural monument. This has become a meeting place for artists, writers, students and anyone who likes to chat and to be seen. Dutch­born Mata Hari, the legendary World War I spy, held her wedding reception at the American in 1894.

Vondel Park is only 200 yards (182 m.) away, to the south-west. This "lung" for the densely built city centre is named after Holland's foremost poet, the 17th century Joost van den Vondel. Its 120 acres (49 hectares) include lawns, lakes and flower displays.
Nearby Museumplein, a broad grassy square wild with crocuses and daffodils in spring is bordered by three major museums and the city's main concert hall. Looking down the square from its rightful place at the top is the palace-like Rijks museum, designed by Petrus Cuypers and opened in 1885, home of one of the world's great art collections.

Whether your interests extend to porcelain, Asiatic or Muslim art, Dutch history, 18th-century glassware or 17th century dolls' houses, the Rijksmuseum has something for you. Highlight is, of course, the European art section, and Dutch painting in particular.

Make your way back to the top of Leidsestraat along the Singel Canal to see the floating flower market (drijvende bloe menmarkt). Here for more than 200 years Amsterdammers have stepped aboard the gently swaying, floating shop boats moored at the canal side to buy the profusion of plants and flowers that you'll see in the windows of their homes, all around.
The Munttoren (Mint Tower) overlooks this colourful 17th Century scene and adds an extra touch of gaiety by chiming out an old Dutch tune every half hour. The tower was originally a medieval gate in the fortified wall of the Singel canal.

A few hundred yards north of the floating flower market is the Begijnhof (Beguine Cur), a charming haven of quiet in the heart of the busy city. Inside is a neat quadrangle of lawn surrounded by perfect 17th and 18th century alms, houses, two small churches and a 15th century wooden house.
English Pilgrim Fathers who fled to Holland before joining the Mayflower prayed regularly in the Beguine Court church dating originally from 1392 and known since 1607 as the Scottish Presbyterian Church. Opposite is the Catholic Church which nuns were allowed to install in two of the almshouses during the Calvinist domination of Amsterdam in the 17th Century.

Leaving the Beguine Court by the rear gate, you will arrive at the vast Amsterdam Hlstorisch Museum (Amsterdam Historical Museum), newly restored after serving as an orphanage for almost 400 years. Its many rooms and galleries tell the city s fascinating story from 1275 to 1945, with exhibits relics from prehistoric remains and the city's original charter to audio-visual slide shows on land reclamation.
Dam Square (called, simply, Dam in Dutch) is the city's heart and raison d´etre, a no frills area always throbbing with life. Exactly here the river Amstel was dammed some time before 1275.

The area has now become a sought after area for artists and designers, a trendy quarter that has blossomed with a number of new and fascinating small shops, boutiques and restaurants alongside the area's traditional "brown bars". Over 800 of its 8,000 houses are protected monuments.
The Ronde Lutherse Kerk (Round Lutheran Church) is located on the Singel canal. Its 146-foot (44m) copper dome has dominated the old herring-packers' quarter here since 1671. The church was rebuilt after being gutted by fire in 1822, and in 1830 a handsome organ was installed.
Over the next century, however, congregations dwindled to such an extent that in 1935 the church was deconsecrated and for a while was used as a warehouse.

At Nieuwendijk 16, is the Nederlands Centrum voor Ambachten (Holland Art and Craft Centre), where you can watch local craftsmen make cheese, cut diamonds and chisel wooden clogs.

The centre of Amsterdam

Railway stations are rarely tourist sites, but Amsterdam's central station, dominating the Damrak boulevard Vista, merits a moment of admiration as both a considerable engineering feat and a fine 19th-century neo-Gothic monument. It was built by Petrus Cuypers, architect also of the Rijksmuseum, on three artificial islands.
At the waterfront opposite the station is the NZH (Noord-Zuid Hollands) Koffiehuis, a protected monument, newly restored, housing the VVV tourist office and a restaurant.

Just a few yards down Damrak from the station, the stock-exchange building, the Beurs, desIgned by Hendrik Petrus Berlage, has always attracted controversy. It was one of Berlage's ultra-modern masterpieces when first un­veiled to the world in 1903.

The Oude Kerk (Old Church) is the city's biggest and oldest church, and it was consecrated around 1300. It is the burial place of Rembrandt's wife, Saskia. Though a wealth of decoration and statuary was disposed of by 17th-Century Calvinists as "Catholic pomp", there remains a lot of Gothic stone carving to be admired both inside and outside, as well as a stained glass window commemorating the Peace of Westphalia which, with the Peace of The Hague, brought an end to the 80 years' Spanish war in 1648.

Museum Amstelkring, otherwise known as Ons Lieve Heer Op Solder (Our Lord in the Attic church), at Oudezljds Voorburgwal 40, is the only one of Amsterdam's 60 once clandestine Catholic churches of the Calvinist era left in its original condition. Tucked away up a series of steep stairs and winding corridors, it contains numerous relics of interest from the 18th Century.

The 1482 Schreierstoren is across the small Chinese quarter of the lower Zeedijk. Henry Hudson left from here to discover Manhattan in 1609, and a plaque hailing the event is one of many on the tower.
Within sight of Schreiers Toren lies the Nederlands Scheepvaartmuseum (Netherland's Maritime Museum), appropriately blessed with a panoramic view of the harbour, and housed in vast old Admiralty supply buildings caller’s Lands Zeemagazijn. It's full of model ships, charts, instruments and all the fascinating paraphernalia of sailing.

The old Montelbaanstoren (Montelbaan Tower) on the Oude Schans Canal, is said to be the city's best-proportioned tower. It was built as part of the 15th-Century defences and bristled with cannons on its then flat roof. In 1606, the architect Hendrick de Keyser added the present l43-foot (43m) spire, with clock and bells, in the same neo-classical style of his other towers.

The Waag (Weigh House) stands like a medieval, seven­turreted castle on Nieuwmarkt Square. It was built in 1488 as a city gate, but was little used as such. It then had a varied career as weigh house, fire station, guild house and museum. The Jewish Historical Museum is now housed in the Waag.
The nearby Zuiderkerk (South Church) has recently been the scene of much building activity. Constructed in the early 17th century, it was much admired by Christopher Wren and is said to be the prototype for many of his London steeples.

The Rembrandthuis (Rembrandt's House) at Joden breestraat 4-6, red shuttered and three storeys high, is a 1606 brick building with a typical Amsterdam step gable. It was the home of Holland's greatest painter from 1639 to his bankruptcy 20 years later.

The South-East region of Amsterdam

The Portugees Israelitische Synagoge (Portuguese Synagogue) was built in 1675 by the city's large community of Sephardic Jews, descendants of refugees from Spain and Portugal in the late 16th century. It's said to have been patterned on the plan of King Solomon's temple.
On Jonas Daniel Meijer Square in front of the synagogue is the Dockworker Statue by Mari Andriessen. Revered by Amsterdam Jew and Gentile alike, this rough figure of a man in working clothes commemorates the events of February 1941, when Amsterdam's dockworkers staged a 24-hour strike in protest against the deportation of Jews.

The cheery, impudent stall­holders of Amsterdam's flea market in Valkenburgerstraat will happily sell you anything, from a fur coat to a twisted piece of lead piping, a fine old wind-up gramophone to a cheap modern lock.

Overlooking Waterlooplein is the Mozes en Alironkerk (Moses and Aaron Church), an 1840 Catholic church. It has an imposing classical facade with a pillared entrance surmounted by a statue of Christ, and twin towers at each end of the balustraded roof. Two gables tones of "Moyses" and "Aaron" from an earlier church on this site are set into the wall.

The River Amstel, from which Amsterdam takes its name, is only a minute's walk away, and the best river view in town is from the Blauwbrug (Blue Bridge). Built in the 1880s, and named after a former blue-painted wooden drawbridge on the site, it is a copy of the Pont Alexandre in Paris, richly ornamented with golden crowns and ships' prows.
Some consider it the city's most beautiful bridge, but look down-river to see its immediate rival, the white wooden drawbridge with nine graceful arches, the Magere Brug, or "Skinny Bridge", as it can be colloquially translated. This is unique and totally Amsterdam-a bottle neck for the single file traffic but a delight for every photographer.

Rembrandtsplein (Rembrandt Square) and the adjoining Thorbeckeplein are Amsterdam's scaled-down version of Times Square, New York, or Leicester. Square, London. Covered with advertising, cinemas, restaurants, bars and nightclub sIgns, they form a brash fun area offering everything from strip-shows to a cup of coffee at one of the many outdoor cafes.
A view of 14 bridges makes a tranquil finale to this active, four-section tour of town. From the far end of Thorbeckeplein, look down ReguIiersgracht to see six of them in a row. To the left down Herengracht are six more, and to the right another two. It´s a particularly memorable vIew in summer after dark, when all the bridges are lit.

What to eat in Amsterdam

Even the dish of mixed fruit in syrup, rudjak manis, will be spicy hot. All in all, what with the crisp, puffy shrimp bread, sour cucumber, cut up chicken, the nuts, the fried banana-not forgetting the skewers of cubed meat with peanut sauce called sateh - the rice table is an unforgettable eating experience.

Dutch specialities include pea soup (erwtensoep); red kidney bean soup (bruine bonensoep); potato and vegetable hash (stamppot) with fat Dutch sausage (worst). Fresh sea fish and vegetables are also plentiful in Amsterdam.

The Dutch are not great dessert-eaters, but that's no reason for you to follow suit. Dutch apple tart (appeltaart) is usually available, with its filling of apples, sultanas and cinnamon. So is fresh fruit. And if you like a spicy-cool dessert, try the typical Dutch gember met slagroom (lumps of fresh ginger with cream).

Second to coffee, beer (pits) is the national drink. Dutch brandy (vieux) is half the price of cognac and milder. Jenever is a juniper-flavoured drink along the lines of English gin.

The claim is made that Amsterdam offers more variety in food and restaurants than any other European city. Pride of place goes to Indonesian cuisine, well ahead of the native Dutch in popularity.
There are up to 32 items in a rijst afel (literally, rice-table). Tackle the feast this way: put a mound of rice in the centre of your plate, and build around it with spoonfuls from your dishes of ban ketjap (pork in soya sauce), daging bronkos (roast meat in coconut-milk sauce), sambal.

Shopping in Amsterdam

Amsterdam shopping is done in any of hundreds of small shops scattered through the central area. Best buys include: Antiques - Plenty of antique shops, especially in the Nieuwe Spiegelstraat, contain bargains. But be aware that up to 50 per cent of the goods may come from Britain or France.

Cigars - renowned throughout the world for their aroma.
Diamonds - a girl's best friend, are all over town. The city has a well-deserved reputation for their cutting and polishing.
Dutch gin, Jenever-a special taste; made from juniper berries is less fiery than English gin.

Pottery-Delft and Makkum pottery; delicate and distinctively different.
Souvenirs include speciality tea, spices, bottles, candles, bamboo basketwork; and dozens of colourful keepsakes to take home.

Amsterdam is a wonderful city to visit and look around. Whether you are in Amsterdam for a long weekend or a two week holiday, you will find plenty of reasonably priced accommodation, small hotels and apartments to rent. Attractions in Amsterdam are wide and varied, and there is plenty to see and do for all ages. Most budget airlines fly to Amsterdam from major airports in the UK, and you can pre-book a hire car before you travel to save time and money when you arrive.