The sweeping views of Budapest from this fortress atop the hill were once valued by the Austrian army, which used it as a lookout after the 1848–49 Revolution. Some 60 cannons were housed in the citadel, and while never used on the city's resentful populace, they were briefly, ominously, pointed down towards the citizens below after the 1956 uprising. The building is closed, but you can walk around it (keep an eye out for bullet holes from the various battles it has witnessed) and the view from the hilltop still makes it a worthy visit, especially at night when the entire city and its bridges are illuminated. Avoid the tacky, overpriced tourists stalls.
Just below the southern edge of the Citadella and visible from many parts of the city, the 130-foot-high Szabadság szobor (Liberty Statue) was originally planned as a memorial to a son of Hungary's then-ruler, Miklós Horthy, whose warplane had crashed in 1942. However, by the time of its completion in 1947 (three years after Horthy was ousted), it had become a memorial to the Russian soldiers who fell in the 1944–45 siege of Budapest; and hence for decades it was associated chiefly with this.
A young girl, her hair and robe swirling in the wind, holds a palm branch high above her head. During much of the communist era, and for a couple of years after its close, she was further embellished with sculptures of giants slaying dragons, Red Army soldiers, and peasants rejoicing at the freedom that Soviet liberation promised (but failed) to bring to Hungary. Since 1992 her mood has lightened: in the Budapest city government's systematic purging of communist symbols, the Red Combat infantrymen who had flanked the Liberty Statue for decades were hacked off and carted away. A few are now on display among the other evicted statues in Szobor Park in the city's 22nd district, and what remains memorializes those who fought for Hungary's freedom.
