Szabadság híd

This guide to the Liberty Bridge in Budapest starts with a small mystery: a silver rivet, driven home by Emperor Franz Joseph himself at the bridge's opening on October 4, 1896, that keeps disappearing from the ironwork no matter how the city tries to hide it. It follows engineer János Feketeházy's winning design, beating twenty other entries, and the wartime destruction that tore out the bridge's central span in January 1945. Look up at the four bronze Turul birds still watching the traffic below.