The banks of the Danube, on which stands the City of Budapest, the magnificent capital and Royal residential city of Hungary, were already peopled in olden times and played always an important role. The beautiful river which first of all served the town as boundary and line of defence, and later as a means of intercourse, seemed to offer, just at this spot, where mountain and lowland meet, and diverse languages and nations intermingle, a favourable colonising settlement for newer and ever newer peoples. We must not wonder therefore, if in the environs of Budapest, we meet with traces of the people of prehistoric times.

Celts and Avars already lived here in considerable colonies, but the importance of the position was recognised later, in still greater measure, by the Romans. The Celtic town of Ak-ink (Water-in-plenty, so called from the numerous springs on the Buda side) became a mighty Roman municipality, the military town Aquincum, the population of which is estimated to have been about 60.000. In the Middle Ages, from whose dark history, the veil can never be altogether lifted, this large town disappeared from the scene of history; so that the land-conquering Magyars, who appeared here in 898, found, as reward for their wandering, hardly more than a heap of ruins. With the spreading of Christianity, whose first martyr, Bishop Gerard (Gellert) was thrown by the heathens down the rocky Gellerthegy (named after him) -- the town which had arisen on the right bank of the Danube attained some importance: the rage of the Tartars, however, spared neither Buda nor Pest, the town built on the plain, on the left bank of the Danube. The fall of the towns moved King Bela IV (in 1245) to turn the hitherto uninhabited Festungsberg into a fortress.

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Adapted from Illustrated Description of Hungary and its Capital