It's no exaggeration to say that Budapest is one of the finest capital cities in Europe, and also one of the best situated. Since 1985, Hungary has become the proud owner of eight World Heritage Site. The first was Budapest, including the Danube panorama (on the Buda side from the Gellért Hotel all along Castle Hill to Margaret Bridge, and on the Pest side from the Parliament back down to Petofi Bridge), and Andrássy út (along its entire length from the centre of Pest to Heroes' Square, where the Millenary Monument stands on the edge of the City Park).
This site has the remains of monuments such as the Roman city of Aquincum and
the Gothic castle of Buda, which have had a considerable influence on the architecture
of various periods. It is one of the world's outstanding urban landscapes and
illustrates the great periods in the history of the Hungarian capital.
Among the several places in Hungary that have been afforded the classification
of UNESCO World Heritage Site, Budapest was the home of such world class inventors
as Kálmán Kandó, the father of electric railways, and
János Irinyi, one of the early developers of matches. Hungary's two
most celebrated composers - Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály
- lived in Budapest, and Nobel Prize-winning Hungarian author Imre Kertész
was born here.