Budapest Guide
The Városliget and the stadium district
The stadium district
The stadium district, 1km south of Vajdahunyad Castle, is chiefly notable for the Puskás Ferenc Stadium, where league championship and international football matches, concerts by foreign rock stars and events such as the national dog show are held. Originally known as Népstadion ("People's Stadium") and built in the early 1950s by fifty thousand Budapestis who "volunteered" their labour, unpaid, on Soviet-style "free Saturdays", it was renamed in 2002 after the legendary footballer and manager Ferenc Puskás (1927–2006), who captained the Mighty Magyars in their stunning triumph over England at Wembley Stadium in 1953 (a team that went unbeaten for a world record of 32 consecutive games), before defecting to forge a second career at Real Madrid.
To the west of the stadium is the smaller Kisstadion, while to the east Stalinist statues of healthy proletarian youth line the court that leads to the indoor Papp László Sportaréna (or Aréna), a mushroom-shaped silver structure which also hosts concerts and sporting events – Papp was the first boxer to win three Olympic gold medals (1948, 1952 and 1956). The Stadion bus station completes this concrete ensemble.
Catching trolleybus #75 along Stefánia út, past the Aréna, you can admire the Geological Institute at no. 14, one of the major edifices in Budapest designed by Ödön Lechner. The exterior is as striking as his Post Office Savings Bank and Applied Arts Museum, with a gingerbread facade, scrolled gables and steeply pitched Transylvanian roofs patterned in bright-blue tiles, crowned by figures holding globes on their backs. By visiting its small Geological Museum (Földani Múzeum; Thurs, Sat & Sun 10am–4pm; 400Ft), you can also see something of the interior, with its gingerbread stucco and faux lapis lazuli stairways.