Jewish Quarter Budapest

Budapest's district VII is the smallest of the city's 23 districts. It is known as Erzsébetváros which literally means "Elizabethtown," in honour of Empress Elizabeth of Austria and Hungary. It became the city's hub for Jewish life in the late 18th Century as Jewish residents settled in Pest's bustling inner city, close to the commercial heart of the city. By 1930 there were around 200,000 Jews living in Budapest, mostly in this district, a thriving community of business owners, doctors, lawyers, musicians and journalists.

Following the German occupation of 1944, a ghetto was created encircling much of the old Jewish Quarter, including the two main synagogues on Dohány and Kazinczy streets. The neighbourhood bore the full weight of that trauma, and its scars are still visible. The Jewish Quarter declined further in the 1950s as residents moved to the suburbs or fled Communist Hungary altogether, leaving behind neglected streets and dilapidated buildings. The resurgence of District VII would begin in the early 2000s with the establishment of the 'ruin bars' quirky drinking joints set inside the vast courtyards of vacant pre-war buildings that had been slated for demolition. Nowadays, visitors to District VII will find synagogues standing shoulder-to-shoulder with ruin bars, memorial plaques sharing walls with street art, and centuries of Jewish history mingling with some of Europe's most inventive nightlife.