Hungary is a landlocked country in the Carpathian Basin of Central Europe; its capital is Budapest. The Hungarian mother tongue is part of the Finno-Ugric language family; it does not share a heritage with the Germanic or Romance languages, but with Finnish and Estonian. The territory has been inhabited since the early Paleolithic period; following Celtic and Roman periods, the foundation of Hungary was laid in the 9th century by the Magyar chieftain Árpád.
The kingdom of Hungary continued until the 13th century, when the Mongolian Tatars devastated the country and halted development for at least a century. From the 16th to the late 17th century, the Ottoman Empire occupied Buda and Hungary was split into three parts ruled by the Turks, the Habsburgs and Transylvania, respectively. In the 19th century Hungarian nationalism came to the fore; Pest, Buda and Obuda were united as Budapest, and many of the city’s architectural delights, such as the Opera House and the Parliament, were constructed at that time.
Hungary allied itself with Germany in both World Wars, but suffered defeat. The Russians occupied Hungary in 1945, beginning the Communist era. In 1989, Hungary opened its border with Austria, accelerating the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, and the Soviet army left Hungary in 1990. Today, Hungary is a parliamentary republic. Visitors to Hungary enjoy touring the older and more modern sections of Budapest, sampling the local cuisine and wines, taking in operatic or folkloric performances and visiting the area’s beautiful spas. Budapest’s 19th-century Moorish-style Dohány Street Synagogue, also known as the Great Synagogue, is the largest in Europe and fourth-largest in the world. It was bombed and used as a stable during World War II but underwent a three-year reconstruction in the 1990s funded largely by a Hungarian Jewish émigré, the late Estée Lauder.
Hungary has contributed much to the arts—composers Bartók and Liszt, writers Péter Esterházy and Imre Kertész to name a few—and sciences, with important innovations in the fields of mathematics, computing and physics. Hungarians invented holography (Dennis Gabor), the ballpoint pen (László Bíró) and the Rubik’s cube (Ernő Rubik).