The Danube bank
The Danube bank is only a few steps from the church.
Elizabeth Bridge,
suspended on pylons on the two banks, was rebuilt in 1964. North of it, on the
riverside promenade, rises the modern building of the Hotel Mariot,
completed in 1970.
Next to it on the little square we see the statue of Sándor Petôfi
(1823-1849), who brought a new, deeply lyrical yet popular spirit to Hungarian
poetry; he was the immortal poet of the
1848-49 Revolution and War of
Independence and he died on the battlefield fighting for Hungary's freedom.
The little Baroque mansion at No. 2 Pesti Barnabás utca (off Petõfi tér)
which now houses the Százéves (Hundred-year-old) restaurant is the only example
of eighteenth-century secular Baroque architecture in Pest. It was built in
1755 by András Mayerhoffer; the restaurant was opened in 1831.