Grand Boulevard (Budapest)


Nagykörút or Grand Boulevard is one of the most central and busiest parts of Budapest, a major thoroughfare built by 1896, Hungary's Millennium. It forms a semicircle connecting two bridges of the Danube, Margaret Bridge on the north and Petőfi Bridge on the south. Usually the part inside and around this semicircle is counted as the city centre of Budapest.

Meaning

Nagykörút is actually a colloquial name of its five parts which connect to each other: Szent István körút, Teréz körút, Erzsébet körút, József körút and Ferenc körút; these are the names the traveller will find on the map and the buildings. Nagykörút is usually meant to include its Pest part, but it might be applied to its extension on the Buda side as well.

Location

It consists of a 35- to 40-metre-wide, about 4.5-kilometre-long road with a tram line in the middle. It crosses a few major squares such as Nyugati tér, Oktogon and Blaha Lujza tér, basic points of reference for the locals. The four major roads which cross it are Váci út, Andrássy Avenue, Rákóczi út and Üllői út.

Features, notable spots

On the Nagykörút one can find the Comedy Theatre, Western Railway Station, Radisson Blu Béke Hotel, Corinthia Hotel Budapest, the New York Café, today Boscolo Budapest Hotel, and the Art Nouveau palace of the Museum of Applied Arts. Among the modern landmarks are the Skála Metró shopping centre and the WestEnd City Center, a shopping mall. Beside them, there are many small and bigger shops, stores on its either side, and mostly turn-of-the-century residential buildings above them.

Transport

Metros

The four metro lines have five stations on Nagykörút, at the junctions of the above four roads: Nyugati pályaudvar, Oktogon, Blaha Lujza tér, Rákóczi tér and Corvin-negyed.

4 and 6 trams

A characteristic vehicle of the Grand Boulevard is the tram no. 4 and 6, reaching Buda both in north and south Újbuda-központ and Móricz Zsigmond körtér. The line dates back to 1887 and it has since extended to 8.5 km in length and 21 stations to become the busiest tram line of Europe, carrying 200,000 travellers a day.
Its trams, a unique type in Budapest, have been replaced by low-floor Siemens Combino Supra vehicles, the longest in Europe, after July 1, 2006. Tram stations were elevated and in places widened and modernized, ramps added, the electric cables renovated and some rail sections replaced during the reconstruction, which cost altogether 3.4 billion forints.

Further ring roads in Budapest

There are three further ring roads in Budapest: