Hungarian Stories: the Trees and the Rough Queen

The trees of Budapest: the lions of the Chain Bridge, the Habsburg Empress who became Queen of Hungary and a countess who was bricked up alive in the seventeenth century

The Lion’s Tongue and the Chain Bridge in Budapest, the story of Marschalko

The drink is called The Lion’s Tongue because the lions at the Széchenyi Chain Bridge do not have tongues. The drink is sweet with a smoky aftertaste – the glass rests on the stone table at Flava – Verno House, Budapest. From the ceiling hang cascading leaves, the green of the trees in Liberty Square.

It was a tale, or better, it was just a joke, spread among the Hungarian citizens of Buda and Pest when the two cities were united, and the bridge was inaugurated in 1849 with a great festive event. A young cobbler named Jakab Friock, shouted that the lions had no tongues, stirring the crowd to accuse the sculptor Janos Marschalko of naive forgetfulness. It was just a jocular remark, but it became a topic of discussion in the city – and Marschalko took offense. He used to respond to those who bothered him that he hoped every wife had the tongue of his lions. Marschalko invited the slanderers to the zoo to look closely at the lions and their resting tongues – gaining reason and value.

The Verno House, the Television Palace, and the Buda Castle for the Palatine of Hungary

The windows of the Verno House room overlook Liberty Square. On the left, beyond the trees, the bulk of the Stock Exchange Palace, an Art Nouveau building, today unused and abandoned. In every room of the Verno House, the smell of the fig tree is in the air. A rotary phone is on the sideboard. The desk is placed by the window. A hot water pool is in the basement. We are at the table drinking cocktails and eating local meats, talking about Hungarian chronicles.

The Royal Palace looks like a cat lying on the hill. This Buda Castle is a UNESCO heritage site, and it defines the profile of the city. The Habsburg sovereigns never lived in the Buda Castle, which became the residence of the Palatine – but in the time of Maria Theresa, the Palatine of Hungary was a Habsburg. The Palatine was the ruler of Hungary, still subordinate to the emperor but strong in autonomy.

There were three Habsburg Palatines: the middle one, Joseph, remained in power for 51 years and brought the city to a European capital dimension. Under his government, the Chain Bridge was built – thanks to the work of the then Minister Istvan Szechenyi – a man of relations in all Europe, polyglot and cultured, who traveled to Italy and England to study the languages and read the authors. He gave up his noble revenues and donated them to the construction of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He found the financing for the bridge construction and for the lion sculptures. He once attempted suicide but was saved – he tried again, frightened by the Austrian police accusing him of collusion with the rebels, and killed himself in 1860.

The Danube in Budapest: Empress Elisabeth Queen of Hungary: Sisi, the movie

Between Buda and Pest, the Danube is 300 meters wide – the construction of the Chain Bridge was inspired by the Marlow Bridge in London. At the time of construction in 1849, Hungary was fighting against Austria to assert the national independence. Only in 1867, thanks to the conciliatory weaving orchestrated by Elisabeth, the Austrian Empire become the Austro-Hungarian Empire. From that moment, Franz Joseph was Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary. In the previous years, an attempt was made to Germanize the Hungarians, as if to transform them into one of the German peoples – the recognition of the Kingdom sanctioned the opposite.

Elisabeth, Empress of Austria – we can also call her Sisi – is said to have had a long love affair with Count Andrassy, a subversive condemned to death in Austria in 1851 and saved by an amnesty wanted by her husband. In the film of our childhood, directed by Ernst Marishcka in the 1950s, when the Empress was Romy Schneider, the names of Hungarian families appear as extras. Countess Esterhazy was a stern lady-in-waiting, and Batthyany refused to greet the Queen.

The trees of Budapest Katalin Novak and the work of Fokert

Today the trees have been planted: in the city squares, in the narrower streets in the center, and along the arteries along the Danube. Maples, limes, horse chestnuts, oaks. The plantings have been proceeded for the last seasons; the urban planning has been recently implemented. An orange juice – I ask the boy who works here at the bar who is behind the push for urban forestry. “We had a woman president in recent years; women know how to manage the house” – he replies with a little pride but also dodging his eyes, perhaps because of the divisive character Katalin Novak was until the scandal that led to her fall and resignation last February 2024.

The afforestation operations in Budapest were conducted by Fokert, a private company engaged in horticulture since 1867, which became a public company. Searching for more information online about Fokert, only pages in Hungarian can be found: some news is retrieved from the PestBuda news site. Fokert employees take care of the maintenance of millions of square meters of green in Budapest. Hedges, urban forests, and rows along the roads. 

The planting technique follows the Miyawaki method – referring to the experiences of the Japanese ecologist Miyawaki Akira. The method involves the planting of tree seedlings at high density so that the strongest genetics have the propulsion to emerge over the others more quickly, accelerating plant growth and obtaining robust afforestation in a reduced time. Also, to support the implantation of robust and resilient green areas, Fokert has planned the installation of so-called “insect hotels”: devices that might seem like small houses, where wooden touches and rolls of bark provide a home for pollinating insects.

Traveling by car, leaving the highway, the villages in Hungary appear as inhabited houses along provincial roads. Written this way, it might seem like a reminiscence of the Soviet period – but these houses have trees in front of the door, flower bushes at the carriageway where a channel runs to drain the rain. The comparison with the public housing of the countryside just outside Milan arises spontaneously.

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Godollo: the queen of Hungary and the bank for the emperor

When the Empress of Austria, who became Queen of Hungary, chose the palace of Godollo as a vacation spot for the whole family, the entire area found wealth. The railway network included a route that could arrive here and be supplied through the coal provision arranged for the Royal Villa. Other families from Pest chose the area as a summer resort. A social and worldly life was created – and at the same time, artisans, blacksmiths, and all the labor of the area had work requests. The Godollo bank was founded, with the emperor as the first shareholder. An example of the area’s wealth can be found in the castle of the town of Tura: a building whose construction in 1883 was inspired by both the French castles along the Loire and Halton House in England, owned by the Rothschild family.

The Tura Castle, BDPST Group, and Istvan Tiborcz

The land was purchased by Baron Sigmund Schossberger a few years earlier in 1869 – that is, a few years after the Hungarians had found a solid root to respect their national identity. The baron gave it to his wife and lived there with his family. The years passed by, and the two sons did not take care of the castle. With the arrival of the wars, the house fell into disrepair. After the war, it became a school and served as such until 1973. It returned to private hands and was subject to transactions and sales.

Today, the Tura castle is presented as the real estate pinnacle of the BDPST Group, a holding company working in real estate, tourism, logistics, and finance. The property belongs to Istvan Tiborcz, one of the most prominent – and therefore spotted – businessmen in Hungary (as reported by the Daily News Hungary).

The BDPST Group has gathered the hotel properties in the Botaniq Collection, which includes Verno House in Budapest. Here at the Tura Castle, twenty rooms are arranged on the first and second floors – with a too-marked quality difference between the two levels. Climbing the first stairs, you access spacious rooms beyond the standard, canopy beds, and living rooms as bedrooms; the second ramp in the tower leads to more cramped rooms under the roof. Today, Tura Castle is a destination for young and rich people in the countryside, adorned with flowers and lit with lights.

The Habsburgs and the Heart Crypt

It was a tradition of the House of Habsburg to have their bodies buried without their hearts and entrails. The Capuchin Crypt preserves the remains, while the heart was removed and placed in a dedicated urn – and kept in the Hearts Crypt at the Hofburg. Franz Joseph opposed this practice and ordered that his body and that of his wife not be touched – whereas the last archduke with such a recognized title, Otto von Habsburg, who died in 2011, wanted his heart to be preserved in Hungary, in the Benedictine Abbey of Pannonhalma.

Driving, we head towards the Austrian border. We stop first in the town of Sarvar where the first Hungarian book was printed, an edition of the New Testament – and where Countess Elisabeth Bathory lived.

Elisabeth Bathory in the Nadasdy family’s fortress in Sarvar

At the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, Elisabeth Bathory lived in the Nadasdy family’s fortress, having married the heir. She was wealthier than the Habsburg Emperor of the time, Matthias II – her nephew would become the Prince of Transylvania. She is credited with nighttime sagas and the tale of the black queen from Snow White. The lady of Sarvar was accused of torturing and killing over a hundred young women to use their blood to maintain her youthful appearance. Legends and slander, conspiracies and condemnations. Some aspects of the story can be confirmed: the woman was unstable, and the consanguineous genealogy had led to mental disturbances and schizophrenia – but the emperor and Count Thurzò, Palatine of Hungary, coveted her lands and wealth. The accusations served their purpose. The woman was imprisoned, bricked up alive, fed through a hole – she starved herself to death.

The Nadasdy castle is now a public building, after the state took ownership from the last King of Bavaria who came here in exile. Sarvar is surrounded by light, lakes, and forests – as every fairy tale requires, black magic has been defeated. Thermal veins clash in the depths of the earth, and the entire city of Sarvar is a source of healing and warm water.

Melea, Botaniq Collection: green building and short supply chain

In Sarvar, we find the third establishment of the Botaniq Collection, the Melea, The Health Concept. A hotel and a place for body care. The building is constructed with green building techniques using heat pumps provided by Geo Concept and low-energy lighting. The garden is inspired by Japanese design. The treatments follow Thai art. The kitchen’s supply chain is short: the meat comes from a cattle farm that only raises free-range livestock. The fish is a sturgeon from the river. The buffet is a taboo, against the concept of waste. The coffee is processed less than 25 kilometers away. The name Melea is the name of the Rosary Tree – its fruit seeds were used for prayer.

Carlo Mazzoni