Széchenyi Chain Bridge — bridge
Image by Zsubio from Pixabay

Széchenyi Chain Bridge

  • 2 min read
  • 47.499° N 19.044° E

Interesting facts

  • In 1849 Austrian troops tried to blow up the new bridge; Adam Clark had flooded the chain chambers, and the charge left on the deck did little damage.
  • The bridge appears on the Hungarian 200-forint coin, which has carried its image since 2012.
  • In 2001 Hungarian aerobatic pilot Péter Besenyei flew his plane upside down beneath the bridge.
  • Adam Clark stayed in Hungary, built the Buda Castle Tunnel that the bridge leads into, and is one of very few foreigners buried in Kerepesi Cemetery.
  • Construction drawings by Adam Clark, around 185 years old and previously unknown, were identified by a Budapest museum in 2025.
  • The bridge is 375 metres long in total and about 15 metres wide, built of wrought iron and stone with cast-iron decoration.
  • It only took the name Széchenyi Chain Bridge in 1898; for its first half-century it was known simply as the Chain Bridge.
  • In October 1918 several demonstrators were killed on the bridge in a clash that became known as the Battle of the Chain Bridge.
  • Adam Clark spent ten years on the project at an annual salary of 400 pounds, then married into a Hungarian noble family.
  • The bridge has appeared in films including Spy, I Spy and Walking with the Enemy, and in the opening shots of Katy Perry's Firework video.

Why it is worth it

Before 1849 Buda and Pest faced each other across the Danube with no permanent crossing. The Chain Bridge changed that. Count István Széchenyi championed the project, the English engineer William Tierney Clark designed it in 1839, and the Scottish engineer Adam Clark — no relation — supervised the work on site; the ironwork was made in Britain and shipped out in sections. When it opened in 1849, in the aftermath of the revolution of 1848, its 202 m central span was among the longest in the world, and it was the first permanent bridge across the Danube anywhere in Hungary.

Its look is unmistakable: two massive stone towers, with iron chains swooping between them and anchored in the squares at either end. The bridge is a scaled-up version of Tierney Clark's suspension bridge over the Thames at Marlow, and a plaque on the Pest side notes that these two are the only survivors of his bridges. Stone lions by the sculptor János Marschalkó guard the abutments; a persistent local story claims they have no tongues, which is untrue — the tongues are simply not visible from the ground. The Greek-born banker Georgios Sinas, who helped finance the bridge, has his name carved on the Buda-side foundation.

The bridge has lived through the city's upheavals. It was reinforced in 1914, saw demonstrators killed during the revolution of 1918, and was blown up by retreating German troops on 18 January 1945, leaving only the towers standing; it was rebuilt and carried traffic again in 1949, exactly a century after its first opening. The setting is part of the pleasure. On the Pest side it lands at Széchenyi Square beside the Gresham Palace and the Academy of Sciences; on the Buda side at Clark Ádám Square, with the Zero Kilometre Stone and the funicular climbing to Buda Castle. At night, with the chains outlined in lights and the Parliament glowing upstream, it is the defining view of Budapest.

Getting there

The bridge is in central Budapest, linking Széchenyi Square in Pest with Clark Ádám Square in Buda, where the Castle Hill Funicular starts. Budapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport (BUD) is about 18 km away. It is best crossed on foot, slowly, with the castle ahead.

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Budapest 9The Most Beautiful Places in Hungary 12The Most Beautiful 19th-Century Bridges 6The Greatest 19th-Century Engineering Wonders 22The Most Beautiful Bridges 63The Greatest Engineering Wonders 271

From the encyclopaedia

The Széchenyi Chain Bridge is a chain bridge that spans the River Danube between Buda and Pest, the western and eastern sides of Budapest, the capital of Hungary. Designed by English engineer William Tierney Clark and built by Scottish engineer Adam Clark, it was the first permanent bridge across the Danube in Hungary. It was opened in 1849. It is anchored on the Pest side of the river to Széchenyi Square, adjacent to the Gresham Palace and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and on the Buda side to Adam Clark Square, near the Zero Kilometre Stone and the lower end of the Castle Hill Funicular, leading to Buda Castle.

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47.49891, 19.04353per Wikidata