page_title: Budapest's Palace District
section_title: Pre-1945 History
hierarchical_section_title: Budapest's Palace District / Pre-1945 History
caption_attribution_description: English: The Dreher beer hall at Eszterházy u 6: part of the interior in 1941
context_page_description: Budapest's Palotanegyed forms an inner part of Pest, the eastern half of Budapest. Known until the communist period as the ‘Magnates’ Quarter’, it consists of the western part of the city's Eighth District, or Józsefváros, which was named on 7 November 1777 after Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor and Archduke of Austria, who reigned 1765-1790. Józsefváros developed immediately east of the medieval walls of Pest and was originally called Lerchenfeld or the Alsó-Külváros. The Palotanegyed's borders are the Múzeum körút to the west, Rákóczi út to the north, the József körút to the east and Üllői út to the south.
context_section_description: . 
  The two-metre great flood of 1838 caused the collapse of 900 buildings in the Józsefváros, with only 250 surviving.The few buildings in the Palotanegyed which survive from before 1838 include the Szent Rókus-kápolna (Chapel of St Roch - the patron saint of plague sufferers), built in 1711 in the hope of warding off the plague then devastating Pest, on the site of an early Christian, possibly 4th century, chapel.  The oldest known building in the Palace District, it was rebuilt in 1945 after being destroyed in World War II - and then was damaged badly again in 1956.  The Szent Rókus Kórház (St Roch Hospital) next door - was opened in 1796, but in its current incarnation offers few clues to its antiquity.
  A major impetus for the area's development after the great flood was the construction at its western end of the magnificent neo-classical Hungarian National Museum between 1837 and 1847, designed by the Viennese-born architect Mihály Pollack, after whom the square behind the museum is named.  Meetings of the upper house of the Hungarian parliament, established as part of the compromise which founded the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary in 1867, were held in the National Museum until the opening of the new Hungarian parliament building in 1904.  The rest of Hungary's original parliament was established next door to the museum at Főherceg Sándor utca (Archduke Alexander Street) (today Bródy Sándor utca) 8.  This street was named in honour of Hungary's Habsburg Palatine, or Viceroy, during the years 1790-95, Archduke Alexander Leopold of Austria, in 1840.
  The building, completed in 1866, was designed by one of 19th century Budapest's great architects, Miklós Ybl, who also designed the Opera House and the Basilica, as well as five of the Palotanegyed's palaces (Festetics, Pálffy, Károlyi (on Pollack Mihály tér), Bókay and Odescalchi/Degenfeld-Schomburg).  Today the old parliament building houses the Italian Cultural Institute.
  Between 1860 and the outbreak of the First World War, members of the dual monarchy's aristocratic and mercantile elite - many of whom were members of parliament - built around 36 city palaces or mansions in the same area.  The Károlyi family built four palaces in the district, Count János Zichy and his family three, while the Bánffy and Wenckheim families each built two.  The district's palaces were mostly constructed in the streets surrounding the Museum (today's Bródy Sándor utca, Pollack Mihály tér, Muzeum utca, Reviczky utca and Ötpacsirta utca.
  But a number were also built further east, including on today's Lőrinc pap tér, Gyulai Pál utca, Horánszky utca, Szentkirályi utca and Trefort utca.  The other residential buildings constructed in the Palace District around the same time were designed mainly for middle or upper-middle class occupants. The term 'palota' ('palace') is used more elastically in Hungary (and in much of Continental Europe) than in the English-speaking world. In the Palotanegyed it refers to everything from genuine palaces (such as the Wenckeim Palace, now Szabó Ervin Library) for aristocratic families, to buildings with generously-proportioned apartments for the wealthy upper-middle classes (such as the Emich Palace on Horánszky utca).
  The Palace District is also notable for one of Budapest’s two surviving buildings designed by the famous Viennese architects Fellner & Helmer, the István Károlyi or Károlyi-Csekonics palace at Múzeum utca 17. (The other is the Vígszínház on the Szent István körút).
  One of the great classical architects of Pest, József Hild, designed one of the earlier buildings in the district, the 1842 Virágfüzéres ház (‘Garland House’) at Baross utca 40. At the time of writing it was dilapidated and set to be unsympathetically renovated with a large roof extension.
  Most of the Palotanegyed’s architecture echoes that of the Viennese Franz-Joseph era from the 1840s until World War One. However there are also a number of buildings in the Hungarian Secession style, championed most famously by Ödön Lechner, notably the Gutenberg Otthon and several buildings on Vas u
caption: The Dreher beer hall at Eszterházy u 6: part of the interior in 1941