(CNN) — “Budapest” rolls off the tongue pretty easily, and the Hungarian capital itself feels as if it’s been around for a long time.
But Budapest is a relatively recent construct — the result of an 1873 merger between two distinct cities: Buda on the western bank of the Danube and Pest on the bank opposite.
The result, Budapest, sounds so much more natural than other twin cities — Minneapolis/St. Paul or Dallas/Fort Worth — it’s difficult to imagine that the alternative “Pestbuda” was floated seriously at the time.
Although they’ve been populated for centuries, Pest and Buda have developed so separately that the first bridge spanning the Danube, the imposing Chain Bridge, wasn’t built until 1849.
Their distinctiveness continues to this day.
Read all: Buda vs. Pest: One city, two personalities
