If you are reading this blog, then you are already familiar with the Chain Bridge (it’s that one that is lit up like a Christmas tree in the header image above). More in-the-know readers will identify it as one of the city’s cultural landmarks and tourist attractions, and if you have visited Budapest, you have probably walked across it. Eddie Murphy even filmed a pivitol scene in his comedy I Spy there. What you might not know, is that the bridge is at the center of one of Budapest’s enduring urban legends. The statues of the four lions that guard each end of the bridge are said to have no tongues. Less politically correct commentators will claim that they once had tongues, but they were stolen by Gypsies. The legend has evolved, it is said that upon hearing that his lions had been sculpted with no tongues, the artist, János Marschalkó, killed himself. The same fate was said to have befallen the bridge’s primary engineer, Péter Wellner, who – as the legend goes – also did himself in when he discovered that he had not ordered enough material for the bridge to expand the full width of the Danube.
Both myths have been proven false. The tongues, despite local wags, are quite intact, but cannot be seen from the pedestrian-level walk. Marschalkó lived to continue with his art, and was said to have only shrugged his shoulders when he learned that his lion tongues could not be seen by the earth-bound passers-by. Reports Péter Wellner’s death were also greatly exaggerated, as he lived to work on another bridge.
It is odd that so many legends surround the Chain Bridge when the real history is almost as fascinating. Construction was instigated by Count István Széchenyi (indeed, the bridge’s official name is the Széchenyi Bridge). With the plans of British engineer William Tierney Clark, and supervised Scottish engineer Adam Clark, the bridge was completed a decade after its inception. At the time, the Chain Bridge was the second longest suspension bridge ever built, and proved one of the age’s great engineering feats. The bridge served to connect Buda and Pest, and brought the two separate communities into economic competition with one another, spurring huge growth for the city on whole.
The original Chain Bridge stood until World War II, when the retreating German army decided it was in need of restoration, and blew it up, leaving only the pillars standing in the Danube. Reconstruction started almost immediately, and was completed on November 20, 1949, exactly one century after the Chain Bridge’s original christening: an accomplishment that was, dare we say, legendary.
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