Budapest, Hungary

Budapest - darkometer rating : 4 - The grand capital city of Hungary . It is of interest to the dark tourist due to the grim parts of its history especially during the Nazi and communist periods, covered in a number of specialized museums, as well as for a great number of monuments and a couple of atmospheric cemeteries. > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info: Budapest's history goes back to antiquity, once a Roman settlement, then taken by the arriving Hungarians, looted by the Mongols and occupied by the Ottomans for a century and a half, then after the reconquest in the late 17th century began a longer phase of prosperity. Originally two separate towns, Buda and Pest, it became a unified city only in 1873. It was the co-capital (alongside Vienna ) in the Austro -Hungarian Empire until its fall at the end of WW1 , after which it became the capital of the now separate and independent republic of Hungary . Budapest had long been a centre of Jewish life, with a large proportion of Jews amongst the populace (almost a quarter at its peak). That changed radically in WWII . Initially, Jews were safe in Hungary as the government, though siding with the Axis powers including Germany ’s Nazis , was reluctant to target its large Jewish population. But as the Germans came to occupy Hungary and Budapest from March 1944, they and their local accomplices of the Arrow Cross, Hungary’s own Nazis (see House of Terror ), brought the Holocaust to Budapest too. Tens of thousands were deported to especially Auschwitz and gassed. Locally, the Arrow Cross committed mass executions of Jews and others, often right by the banks of the River Danube (see below ).