Fodor's Expert Review Szabadság tércomm

The sprawling Liberty Square has represented the pursuit of liberty for Hungarians since its days as the site of a massive troop barracks and the execution of Prime Minister Lajos Batthyány following the failed revolution against the Habsburg Dynasty in 1848. The square is dominated by the former longtime headquarters of Magyar Televizió (Hungarian Television), a former stock exchange building with what looks like four temples and two castles on its roof. Across from it is a solemn-looking neoclassical shrine, the Nemzeti Bank (The Hungarian National Bank). The bank's Postal Savings Bank branch, adjacent to the main building but visible from behind Szabadság tér on Hold utca, is another exuberant art nouveau masterpiece of architect Ödön Lechner, built in 1901 with colorful majolica mosaics, characteristically curvaceous windows, and pointed towers ending in swirling gold flourishes.

In the square's center remains a gold hammer and sickle atop a white stone obelisk, one of the few monuments to the Russian "liberation" of Budapest in 1945 that has not been banished to Statue Park. There were mutterings that it, too, would be pulled down, which prompted a Russian diplomatic protest; the monument, after all, marks a gravesite of fallen Soviet troops but also a reminder of how close the city was to falling into Nazi hands.

As if in counterbalance, a memorial statue of Ronald Reagan---one of five that Reagan commissioned himself in his will---was erected in the summer of 2011, standing just left of the Soviet liberation monument. Next to it, at Szabadság tér 12, Stars and Stripes flying out in front and with a high-security presence, stands the United States Embassy. One of the square's most popular stories is how Cardinal József Mindszenty, fearing religious persecution, lived here as a guest of the U.S. government for 15 years during communism. On the south side of the square another monument appeared amid controversy in 2014. The Memorial for Victims of the German Occupation is a state-commissioned statue that commemorates the Hungarian victims of the German Nazis in WWII. Germany, represented by a vicious eagle, is attacking the peaceful form of the Archangel Gabriel, Hungary's parton saint. Jewish and opposition leaders have criticized the statue as an attempt to absolve the Hungarian state and Hungarians of their collaboration with Nazi Germany and complicity in the Holocaust. The latest addition is on the other side of the Soviet obelisk, a statue of former U.S. President George H. W. Bush erected by the Hungarian government in October 2020 to mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe. A political location from its historical beginnings, but a center of leisure life in the city, too, Szabadság tér is also simply a great place to walk or take a break from sightseeing. During major football championships, like the World Cup, it is turned into an outdoor screening area and packed to the gills with locals. About four times a year it is the sight of culinary and seasonal festivals.