Further walks in the City Park

Passing the Gallery of Art on Hôsök tere we reach the southern parts of the City Park. At the intersection of the lakeside promenade and the little bridge leading to the island the statue of George Washington catches the eye. It was erected in 1906 by Hungarians living in the United States at the same time as a statue of the great nineteenth-century Hungarian patriot Lajos Kossuth was raised in Cleveland, Ohio.

The Museum of Transport stands on the corner of Hermina út and Ajtósi Dürer sor, bordering the Park on the east. It was built in 1896 to the plans of Krisztián Ulrich on the occasion of the Millenary celebrations. Its domed building and the greater part of its collection were destroyed during the Second World War. Since it was rebuilt new exhibits are on display, showing the history of bridges and of rail, road, water and air transport.

On the southern edge of City Park, in the little pine-grove is a red marble gravestone with the one-word inscription FUIT. Here rests Jakab Horváth, the defence counsel of Ignác Martinovics and the Hungarian Jacobins in their trial for conspiracy against Habsburg absolutism. Martinovics and his comrades were executed in 1795 on the Vérmezô (Blood Meadow) in Buda; Jakab Horváth bequeathed a legacy to the city of Pest with the request that he be buried under a nameless slab in the City Park.