Emperor Franz Joseph I

The bridge itself carried his name until 1945 — Ferenc József híd. Only after World War II was it renamed Szabadság híd (Liberty Bridge). The man who ruled Budapest for nearly seven decades now rests, of all places, on the bridge that once bore his own name, among padlocks attached by strangers who likely never know this fact. At the bridge’s opening on 4 October 1896, the emperor was present in person and personally drove in the final, silver rivet. The hammock is no coincidence either: it references “Szabihíd,” a car-free event series held since the late 2010s in which the bridge is opened to pedestrians — for picnicking, doing yoga, or indeed lying in a hammock.