Hungarian tourism portal Turizmusonline reports that the Hungarian Parliament made it to the top 10 most beautiful buildings around the world listing by TripAdvisor.
TripAdvisor is considered to be the most popular touristic portal, so the Hungarian Parliament getting featured on one of their lists is an important recognition. Hungarian hotels were featured in their top 25 hotel rankings on several occasions, the last time this has occurred was last January.
Now the Hungarian Parliament has made it to their Top 25 Landmarks – World ranking. This year the Parliament is 10th on the list, climbing up from last year’s 14th place. It is ahead of the Notre Dame (Paris), the Acropolis (Athens) or the main square of Prague, so travellers are really fascinated with this gem of Hungarian architecture.
Turizmusonline writes that the Hungarian Parliament is Europe’s second and the world’s third largest parliament.
Even though the building was intended to commemorate the 1000th anniversary of the Hungarian Conquest of the Carpathian Basin (896), the building was finished only later, in 1904, five weeks after the death of the main designer, Imre Steindl. Out of the 19 plans that were submitted, three were accepted: one is the main winner, Steindl’s parliament, the other two are the Museum of Ethnography and the Ministry of Agriculture. All three buildings are situated at Kossuth Square.
Considering the construction material, this is a very special building, as except for the 6-metre-tall marble-monoliths along the main stairs, which were imported from Sweden, everything is 100% Hungarian.
Despite the fact that today the Parliament is awed mostly for its Neo-Gothic style, back in the day when the first maquettes were revealed, the plan received harsh criticism:
many people associated this style with the Germans. Thus the design was deemed to be ‘anti-Hungarian’. The citizens and architecture critics were so outraged that their negative remarks reached the National Embassy, where there was a strong division among the members whether such a design was worth the nation’s money or not. Fortunately for the later generations, they found it to be worthy.
Below you can find some of the most interesting articles that we have written on the Parliament so far:
10+1 things you didn’t know about the Hungarian Parliament
115 years of the Hungarian Parliament
10 Interesting videos about the Hungarian Parliament: part 1 and part 2
This is how the Hungarian Parliament was built
Here are the Top 10 Landmarks:
Angkor Wat – Siem Reap, Cambodia
Plaza de Espana – Seville, Spain
Seikh Zayed Mosque – Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Saint Peter’s Basilica – Vatican City, Italy
Mosque of Córdoba – Córdoba, Spain
Taj Mahal – Agra, India
Milan Cathedral – Milan, Italy
Alcatraz Island – San Francisco, California
Golden Gate Bridge – San Francisco, California
Hungarian Parliament – Budapest, Hungary
featured image: Guavin Pictures