Index – Culture – Open Methuselah – a pattern of centuries-old houses



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The original concept of the Budapest100 movement is that on the 100th day of the year, the houses that celebrate their 100th birthday will be opened to the public by their residents and operators. This year’s date does not expire on the 100th of the year due to the coronavirus epidemic, but on the weekend (September 19-20). At the event, the buildings can be visited, accompanied by guided tours by architects, while the celebration houses offer programs, concerts, guided tours of the apartments, and sometimes a more modest party.

The series of events celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. At first, the idea was for only 100-year-old houses to be featured in any given year, but the initiative should no longer be taken literally, as now every 100 HUF in 100 HUF stores. Starting in 2016, organizers started in a new direction and chose neighborhoods as themes because few new houses were built during WWI. For this reason, the buildings were first opened on the 120-year-old Grand Boulevard and then held along the docks. In 2018, the theme of the Square was elaborated, and in 2019, on the occasion of the centenary of the Bauhaus, they followed in the footsteps of early modern architecture in Budapest.

The novelty of the 10th Budapest100 is that now, regardless of age and location, buildings could be joined where residents are happy to open the doors to show where they live and work from the basement to the attic. Budapest100 is a celebration of the city, a weekend in which unknown acquaintances, neighbors and curious urbanites from many places approach each other: “See you on the Tenth!”

The two-day Budapest100 program is available here.

I live here you see, this is the house

Budapest 100 inspired many. Some to move into a 100-year-old house, some to go wide-eyed to Budapest and marvel at our architectural heritage, and some to write books.

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The literary historian Salé Noémi, who describes in her book What Kinds of Peoples, “is given to a few, especially in Budapest: I have lived in the same apartment since I was born in 1956. I often asked my grandmother and the elderly in the house: what were the names of those who lived here before us?

At the age of twelve, I wrote this information on a hideous gray spiral notebook. In 2017, the docks became the center of Budapest’s 100 series of events. Our beautiful house was part of the world heritage, the work of Alajos Hauszmann, well, let’s open the door for those two days.

I take the gray notebook, I know a lot about the residents, it will all be child’s play. Then I opened the Arcanum portal on the web, saying to the machine: Döbrentei utca 8., my word, smell! And I was terribly ashamed of myself. Good grief, because I don’t know anything. Names, stories, dramas and comedies pounced on me, in astonishing confusion, all this ringworm, an unpleasant and badly remembered 20th century. Seeing the huge amount of material, I was also scared to think of a solution: I would be the housekeeper and scatter the household clothes in Tabán ”.

That was not a bad idea at all. Leaving the book, we can say that the history of Budapest, and even more so of the whole of Hungary, arises from the stories, so the book is not only a great read, but also a wonderful journey back in time.

Photos: Budapest 100 private archives



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