Pest, Budapest, Hungary

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Pest

Pest (pron. pesht) - the name of the city does not come from pestis, the
Hungarian name for the plague (pestilence), but in all probability, from
an ancient Slav word meaning "oven" or "furnace"; after all, before the
Conquest (Honfoglalás) the area was settled by Slavs.

Today, the name Pest is used locally to signify the entire capital city,
though it is actually only one part of it, namely, the flat expense of land
lying on the left bank of the Danube.

The unified city-scape of Pest is due to the turn of the century building
frenzy to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Hungarian conquest. In
1873 at the time of the unification of the three towns that became the city
of Budapest, Pest championed the unification, for as opposed to Buda,
which was then the capital of the country, Pest was liberal and
Protestant, and above all, "modern".

Today, Pest is the seat of government (the Parliament, too, is located
here), with many offices, banks, and elegant shops, not to mention
theaters and industrial buildings; on the other hand, though the majority
of the population of Budapest lives and works in Pest, with few
exceptions, the desirable living areas are all located in Buda.

Even though the Inner City Parish Church at the foot of Elisabeth Bridge
was built from the stones of a Roman Age military camp, Pest is a young
city, for after the recapture of Buda in 1686 from the Turk, Pest had to
be built from scratch, and even in 1708, when the so-called Péterffy
Palace (today Százéves Restaurant), the oldest surviving building in the
city was built on the former main Square (on the corner of Galamb and
Pesti Barnabas streets), it had only 1,700 inhabitants.

Source: Istvan Bart, Hungary & the Hungarians. The Keywords

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