Liberty Square

A quiet green square in District V that carries more contested history per square metre than anywhere else in Budapest.

It stands on the site of the Neugebäude, an enormous Habsburg barracks and prison where Lajos Batthyány, Hungary's first prime minister, was executed in 1849 after the failed revolution. The barracks were demolished in 1897 and the square laid out in their place, deliberately, as a statement.

What is on it now does not agree with itself. There is a Soviet war memorial, one of the very last left standing in the city and repeatedly the subject of protest. There is a statue of Ronald Reagan a short distance from it. The United States embassy is on one side and the Hungarian National Bank on another.

And there is the Memorial to the Victims of the German Occupation, erected in 2014, which drew immediate and sustained objection for depicting Hungary as a purely innocent victim of 1944. In front of it citizens laid photographs, suitcases, shoes and personal documents of people deported with Hungarian state involvement. That counter-memorial has never been cleared away and is now part of the site.

It is a short walk from the Parliament, and worth reading before visiting.