ABSTRACT
Until 1873 Budapest consisted of two towns, Buda and Pest, situated on the western and eastern banks of the Danube.1 The distinction was not only a legal one; it applied also to the structure of the urban landscape. No effort seems to have been made to coordinate building or planning before the first half of the nineteenth century, and any such coordination would have been difficult in view of the width of the river, which varies within the urban area between 290 and 500 metres. The topographical conditions are also essentially different: the Pest area is characterized by low-lying land with no evident variations in level, while on the Buda side the ground is hilly with the Castle Hill (Várhegy) and, just south of this, the Gellért Hill (Gellérthegy) as the most important peaks.
