Budapest, Hungary

Budapest  is the capital and the largest city of Hungary, and one of the largest cities in the European Union. It is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre, sometimes described as the primate city of Hungary.  In 2011, according to the census, Budapest had 1.74 million inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2.1 million  due to suburbanisation. The Budapest Metropolitan Area is home to 3.3 million people. The city covers an area of 525 square kilometres  within the city limits. Budapest became a single city occupying both banks of the river Danube with its unification on 17 November 1873 of Buda and Obuda, on the west bank, with Pest, on the east bank. The history of Budapest began with Aquincum, originally a Celtic settlement  that became the Roman capital of Lower Pannonia.  Hungarians arrived in the territory  in the 9th century. Their first settlement was pillaged by the Mongols in 1241–42. The re-established town became one of the centres of Renaissance humanist culture  in the 15th century.  Following the Battle of Mohacs and nearly 150 years of Ottoman rule,  the region entered a new age of prosperity in the 18th and 19th centuries, and Budapest became a global city after its unification in 1873.  It also became the second capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a great power that dissolved in 1918, following World War I.  Source