PARK

As part of the Citadella’s comprehensive renewal, the green space has grown by half again — to around 20,000m² — and within the fortress walls a new public park of more than 6,000m² has been created. The Citadella Park is open to everyone and can be explored freely; a garden-terrace ice cream parlour, a café and a gift shop also await visitors.

Dozens of ornamental flowering trees and shrubs, together with rare dendrological specimens, have been planted throughout the new park, with particular care taken to preserve the site’s valuable existing vegetation. Visitors may continue to admire the pomegranate tree growing here. Flowering lawns, roses, lavender, climbing plants and grapevines lend richness and colour to the landscape, sustained by a modern irrigation system. In the sunniest areas, drought-tolerant planting beds further enhance the visual diversity, ensuring that the park remains varied and inviting whatever the season.

At the centre of the park rises Hungary’s largest national flag. Fluttering from atop its 36-metre-high mast, the 72m² tricolour stands as a visible emblem of unity, remembrance and respect for those who sacrificed their lives for freedom.

Gellért Hill also occupies a distinguished place in the history of Hungarian surveying. It was here, at the observatory once standing on the hill, that the foundations of Hungary’s geodetic network were established, making this point the origin of nearly all Hungarian coordinate systems. Although the original reference point had been destroyed by the mid-19th century, its precise location was later preserved on the East Bastion of the Citadella by a stone column and bronze markers installed in 1933. Today, in the renewed park, this legacy is evoked by a bronze inlay set within a circular stone surface, symbolically marking the Geodetic Base Point and the historic line between eastern and western Hungary.