Jászai Mari tér

The Story

Jászai Mari tér is where the inner city ends and Újlipótváros begins. The Palatinus Houses on the embankment were built in 1911–1912 to designs by Emil Vidor. Their name comes from the Palatine family, who received these plots in exchange for Margaret Island. Jászai Mari lived there from 1914 until her death in 1926.

Most of Újlipótváros went up from the late 1920s through the 1930s, in historicist, Art Deco and Bauhaus styles, around Szent István park. In 1944, houses near Szent István körút were 'protected houses' under foreign consulates and legations, where Jews could live in relative safety. The Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, the Swiss consul Carl Lutz and Giorgio Perlasca are linked to them.

The poet Miklós Radnóti lived at Pozsonyi út 1 from 1935, after marrying Fanni Gyarmati. In May 1944 he was called up for his third labour service and sent to the Bor copper mines in Serbia. When the camp was evacuated that September, the prisoners were force-marched west. In early November 1944 a guard squad shot the exhausted Radnóti and his companions near Abda, beside the Rábca. A plaque and a stumbling stone mark his home.

The Imre Nagy statue by Tamás Varga was unveiled at Vértanúk tere in 1996. It was removed from there in December 2018 and later set up here.

What to Look For

• The Palatinus Houses along the embankment, 16 apartment houses in five blocks built in 1911–1912.
• The Imre Nagy statue by Tamás Varga, re-erected here after it was removed from Vértanúk tere in December 2018.
• The memorial plaque and stumbling stone for the poet Miklós Radnóti at Pozsonyi út 1.
• The building on the square's south side, once state-security and then Communist party headquarters, today parliamentary offices.