Die Stadt der Musen/City of the Muses [antikvár]

Fifteen hundred-year-old proofs attest to the fact that the muses have been present in Budapest-even if not always-since long ago. The two Román amphitheaters (built in the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D.), the ruins of which can still be seen in presentday Óbuda, gave home to the-seemingly-lighter artistic genres such as the circus and gladiator fights; the presence of the more sophisticated forms of entertainment, of art, is illustrated by a 3rd-century organ on show in the Óbuda Museum preserving the remnants of Aquincum, the Román settlement of ancient times. In the 4th century Aquincum, which had been the capital city of the Province of Lower Pannónia for two centuries, lost its importance as well as its culture. The age of migration was an age of arms and not of the arts. The arts were revived in early medieval Buda and Pest only in the 13th century when Buda was made the seat of Hungárián kings. The Royal Palace in Buda was built and embellished by Italian and French architects, sculptors and painters. Due to continuous changes, the destruction and reconstruction of Buda, only fragments of their art survived, now exhibited in the Budapest Historical Museum located in the building of the former Royal Palace. Culture flourished in Buda in the 14th-15th centuries when it became a truly European city in every sense of the word. The second half of the 15th century, when the legendary King Matthias ruled, represents the height of this period. The greatest creative people of the age visited in his Court; his library the Bibliotheca Corviniana, bested all other similar col-