The parking lot in the courtyard of the City Hall in Budapest has been eliminated, and the current 4,000 square meters of the Passage and Inner Courtyard will soon be expanded to 7,000 square meters, which, after decades, will finally be open to the people of Budapest.
City Hall Park to be almost doubled in size
The City Hall Park is entering another important phase, the Mayor’s Office reports. The renovation work on the facade facing Kiskörút (Small Boulevard) is now nearing completion, allowing the car park to be safely transformed into a green area. For the time being, the area will be opened up as a pop-up park with temporary elements. However, the design of the final version is also underway, in parallel with the winning design in the design competition.
The pop-up park is a further extension of the free-roaming area, the first element of which was the Passage, which opened last November on the 150th birthday of Budapest and connects the Kiskörút to the city centre.
The aim is to give the place back to the people
One of the important commitments of the current city government was to create the City Hall Park on the site of the former run-down courtyard, which was closed off to the city’s residents, as part of the redevelopment of the City Hall block.
“Our aim is to create a new, open, green main square in Budapest: to give back to the people of Budapest the fenced-off area in front of the City Hall, where we will create a green agora. We will bring people closer to the day-to-day running of City Hall and host a diverse range of events to make City Hall Park a place for culture and encounters,” the Mayor’s Office writes.
The place already hosted seasonal events
The design and implementation of the City Hall Park will take several years, partly because of the need to coordinate related developments. However, a number of seasonal events and a temporary park are already underway. The Spring Fair, the May Fair and the Winter Experience Park have all been held on the site. Following all this, in the spring of 2024, an exciting pop-up park will open to the people of Budapest in the City Hall courtyard. Details will be announced soon by the city government.
Background to the development
The City Hall Park is part of the renewal of the City Hall, which is a complex and long-term development programme, writes the Mayor’s Office. To underpin the programme, a first comprehensive strategy for the medium-term development of the City Hall was prepared in 2020, aiming to coordinate the different project elements affecting the City Hall building and its surroundings.
Subsequently, in autumn 2021, the Municipality of Budapest announced a design competition for the design of the City Hall Park. There was great interest in the competition, as a total of 19 entries were received, from which a jury of renowned landscape architects, architects and urban planners selected the winning designs.
“In November 2023, to celebrate Budapest’s 150th birthday, we inaugurated the renovated Merlin building. At the same time, we opened the Passage connecting Károly Boulevard with Városháza Street, which leads through the building’s most beautiful inner courtyard,” the website writes.
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