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As the first permanent link between Buda and Pest, the majestic Szechenyi Lanchid (Szechenyi Chain Bridge) has a special place in the hearts of locals, for whom it is a symbol of civic endurance. Austrian troops tried and failed to destroy it in 1849, but in 1945 the bridge fell victim to the Wehrmacht, who dynamited all of Budapest's bridges in a bid to check the Red Army. Their reconstruction was one of the first tasks of the postwar era; the Lanchid reopened on November 21, 1949, on the centenary of its inauguration. The bridge was the brainchild of Count Istvan Szechenyi , a horse-fancying Anglophile with a passion for innovation, who founded the Academy of Sciences and brought steam engines to Hungary, amongst other achievements. Designed by William Tierney Clark , it was constructed under the supervision of a Scottish engineer, Adam Clark (no relation), who personally thwarted the Austrian attempts to destroy it by flooding the chain-lockers. Whereas Szechenyi later died in an asylum, having witnessed the triumph (and subsequent defeat) of Kossuth and the 1848 Revolution, Adam Clark settled happily in Budapest with his Hungarian wife. During his time in Budapest, Clark also built the tunnel ( alagut ) under the Varhegy which, Budapesters joked, could be used to store the new bridge when it rained. Next to the tunnel entrance on the river end is the lower terminal of the Siklo , a nineteenth-century funicular running up to the palace (daily 7.30am-10pm, closed second & fourth Mon of the month; 400Ft uphill, 300Ft downhill; Budapest Card not valid). Constructed on the initiative of Odon, Szechenyi's son, it was only the second funicular in the world when it was inaugurated in 1870, and functioned without a hitch until wrecked by a shell in 1945. The yellow carriages are exact replicas of the originals, but are now lifted by an electric winch rather than a steam engine. In the small park at its foot stands Kilometre Zero , a zero-shaped monument from which all distances from Budapest are measured.
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