0454 HUNGARY (Budapest) - Heroes' Square - part of Budapest, including the Banks of the Danube, the Buda Castle Quarter and Andrássy Avenue (UNESCO WHS)

0454  Heroes' Square in Budapest

Located at the end of Andrássy Avenue, next to City Park, Heroes' Square (Hősök tere) is one of the major squares of Budapest, rich with historic and political connotations. The central site of the square is the Millennium Memorial, with statues of the leaders of the seven tribes that founded Hungary in the 9th century (Árpád, Előd, Ond, Kond, Tas, Huba, and Töhötöm) and other outstanding figures of Hungarian history (on the left colonnade - Stephen I, Ladislaus I, Coloman, Andrew II, Béla IV, Charles I, Louis I; on the right colonnade - John Hunyadi, Matthias Corvinus, István Bocskay, Gabriel Bethlen, Imre Thököly, Francis II Rákóczi, Lajos Kossuth).

At the front of the monument is a large stone cenotaph surrounded by an ornamental iron chain, and directly behind it is a column topped by a statue of the archangel Gabriel. Its construction was started when the one thousandth anniversary was celebrated (in 1896), but it was finished only in 1900 and the square got its name then. Because when the monument was constructed Hungary was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the last five spaces for statues on the left of the colonnade were reserved for members of the ruling Habsburg dynasty, but the monument was damaged in WWII and when it was rebuilt the Habsburgs were replaced by the current figures.

The Heroes' Square is part of Budapest, including the Banks of the Danube, the Buda Castle Quarter and Andrássy Avenue, an UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987, about which I wrote here.

About the stamp

The stamp is part of the series Health Tourism - Spas, about which I wrote here.

References
Hősök tere - Wikipedia

Sender: Petrică Sîrbu, Andreea Dolete and Marian Irimia
Sent from Budapest (Hungary), on 17.10.2012
Photo: Nemeth