Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe, set on the broad plains of the Carpathian Basin and divided by the river Danube. Its people, the Magyars, are unusual in Europe, speaking a language unrelated to those of their neighbours and tracing their origins to migrants who arrived from the east more than a thousand years ago. With its grand capital Budapest, its thermal spas, and its distinctive culture and cuisine, Hungary stands out as a singular nation at the heart of the continent.
The Magyars, a people from the eastern steppes, settled the Carpathian Basin around the end of the ninth century, and around the year 1000 their king, Stephen, adopted Christianity and founded a Christian kingdom. Medieval Hungary became a major power, reaching a cultural height under the Renaissance king Matthias Corvinus. Defeat by the Ottomans in the sixteenth century led to long division and foreign rule, and Hungary later formed half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before its collapse after the First World War.
A cherished Hungarian origin legend tells of two brothers, Hunor and Magor, who while hunting pursued a magical, wondrous stag that led them into new lands, where they settled and became the forefathers of the Huns and the Magyars. The tale expresses the eastern, nomadic roots of the Hungarian people and their sense of a distinct origin. Like other such founding stories, the wondrous stag and the brothers belong to legend and myth rather than to documented history.
Hungary is mostly flat or gently rolling, dominated by the Great Hungarian Plain, a vast expanse of fertile farmland and grassland in the east, with low mountains and hills in the north and west. The Danube flows through the country from north to south, splitting the capital into its halves of Buda and Pest, and Lake Balaton, the largest lake in Central Europe, is a popular retreat. The land sits atop abundant geothermal waters, feeding the famous thermal baths.
The flag of Hungary has three horizontal bands of red, white, and green. The colours have deep roots in Hungarian heraldry and history, and by tradition the red is said to stand for strength, the white for faithfulness, and the green for hope. The horizontal tricolour, inspired by the revolutionary ideals of the nineteenth century, became a symbol of Hungarian national identity and the struggle for independence.
Hungary is historically a Christian country, with Roman Catholicism the largest faith, a legacy of King Stephen's founding of a Christian kingdom, alongside a significant Protestant, mainly Calvinist, minority that took root during the Reformation. As across much of Europe, religious observance has declined and the society has grown more secular, though Christian heritage remains important to national identity and is reflected in the country's churches, traditions, and public life.
Hungarian cuisine is rich, hearty, and famous above all for paprika, the ground red pepper that gives so many of its dishes their warm colour and flavour. The national dish is goulash, originally a herdsmen's soup or stew of meat and vegetables seasoned with paprika, known and imitated around the world. Other favourites include rich meat stews, stuffed cabbage, and the deep-fried flatbread langos, while Hungary also produces fine wines, including the celebrated sweet Tokaji.
Hungary's fertile plains make it a strong agricultural country. The rich soils of the Great Hungarian Plain produce abundant wheat, maize, and sunflowers, and the country is a notable grower of the paprika peppers central to its cuisine. Hungary has a long and distinguished winemaking tradition, especially the sweet wines of the Tokaj region, once prized by European royalty. Livestock, including a famous native breed of long-horned grey cattle, are also part of the rural landscape.
The arrival of the Magyars and the founding of a Christian kingdom around the year 1000 are the bedrock of Hungarian history. The catastrophic defeat by the Ottomans at Mohacs in 1526 ushered in a long age of division and foreign domination. After the First World War the Treaty of Trianon stripped Hungary of much of its territory, a loss still keenly felt. In 1956 Hungarians rose against communist rule in a revolution that was crushed by Soviet forces.
Hungary has a population of around 9.6 million people, overwhelmingly ethnic Hungarians, or Magyars, whose language belongs to a small family unrelated to those of the surrounding nations, setting them apart in the heart of Europe. Large Hungarian communities also live in neighbouring countries, a result of the border changes of the twentieth century. The population is concentrated in cities and towns, above all in the capital, Budapest, a grand city straddling the Danube.
