This is one of the four lions guarding the Chain Bridge in my hometown Budapest. Popular legend (very popular - I was taught it at school...) has it that the sculptor forgot to make tongues for the lions, and when a cobbler called him out on his omission, in his shame he committed suicide by jumping from the bridge. However, this legend is 75% false. First, the sculptor died at old age. Second, the lions do have tongues:
Third, from old newspaper articles, the real story behind the legend was uncovered. (Hungarian link.) There was a cobbler (whom we know by name) who set off a rumour that the lions don't have a tongue. The rumour spread across the whole city, and the sculptor was upset. Even those who knew the tongue was there (on the above photo, you only see it because the teeth in front were broken off) said it looked unreal. So he made a bet with his friends that a real lion has its tongue the exact same way in the same posture - and after they went to the zoo and watched the animal, he won. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
In the 19th century, until 1867 when the Habsburg Empire transfomed into Austria-Hungary, Hungary was kind of a colony for Austria - no state money spent on developments. Among the Hungarian nobility, a lot just wanted to continue exploiding peasants as before, but many - especially the Western-educated - wanted to start industrialisation. This was the so-called "Reform Age", when a series of projects were financed by enlightened aristocrats. The most important was one István Széchenyi, of whom the bridge is officially named.
This bridge was the first permanent bridge on the Danube below Vienna (discounting Hadrian's long-gone bridge). It was revolutionary for the time that a universal bridge ticket was chosen as the means to get back the investment (aristocrats were tax-free at this time). Széchenyi called two British engineers, William Tierney Clark who designed it and Scotsman Adam Clark (unrelated) who supervised construction (then stayed here, marrying a Hungarian woman whose language he didn't speak until his death, nor did she speak English or Scot!)
Just when the bridge neared finishing, the flame of revolution swept Europe: in 1848. It lasted the longest in Hungary, where the Habsburgs called on the Russians to help defeat the independent Hungarian government. During the conflict, first the half-finished deck of the bridge was used for treasury evacuations then burnt; and when all was over in 1849, Haynau, the victorious Habsburg general who was put in charge of retribution, wanted to blow it up - only Adam Clark's protests made him stop. It was finally opened on 20 November 1849, and would be one of the oldest surviving bridges had the Germans not blown it up in 1944. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Uh oh eh, forgot to add that it was rebuilt after WWII; and I should have taken a longer look at my own link. Clark1s earlier work, the model for Budapest's Chain Bridge, the Marlow Bridge, was built 1829-32 and still stands intact:
(But of course, structural elements may have been replaced over the years for this bridge too...) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
