HUNGARY: Hungarian entrepreneur plans to build a replica of Attila the Hun's palace to attract tourists to his resort

Record ID: 742036

  • Title: HUNGARY: Hungarian entrepreneur plans to build a replica of Attila the Hun's palace to attract tourists to his resort
  • Date: 15th May 2007
  • Summary: ENTREPRENEUR AND OWNER OF KINCSEM PARK, JANOS KOCSI SITTING WITH VISITORS AROUND TABLE ON ATTILA MOUND KOCSI HOLDING HIS HAND UP AND TELLING THE WOMEN AROUND THE TABLE TO RELAX WOMEN'S HANDS LIFTING UP FROM THE TABLE KOCSI HOLDING HIS HAND UP AND MOVING HIS LITTLE FINGER KOCSI'S LITTLE FINGER MOVING WOMAN SITTING WITH HER EYES SHUT AND KOCSI'S FINGER MOVING WOMAN WITH HER EYES SHUT
  • Embargoed: 30th May 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Hungary
  • Country: Hungary
  • Topics: History,Travel / Tourism
  • Reuters ID: LVAD773O18SUJAGU5ZWLGX9WAFCH
  • Story Text: A Hungarian entrepreneur dreams of building a replica of the palace of feared Hun warrior Attila, to attract tourists to his resort.
    If you are tired of normal tourists attractions, such as Mickey Mouse and Disneyland, a Hungarian hotelier may have the answer - a planned reconstruction of one of Attila the Hun's palaces next to a mystical healing mound.
    Former butcher Janos Kocsi, who runs a hotel complex and horse centre 80 km (49.71 miles) from Budapest, has been trying to get his Attila Palace built for seven years.
    Tibor Hayde, the palace's architect, whose Asiatic-looking three storey building is based on what he imagines the original may have looked like, sees the commission as the work of a lifetime and says it will be like St Peter's basilica.
    "It is a miracle that we have excellent descriptions about Attila's wooden palace. A Byzantine envoy called Priscos Rhetor had been to Attila's Palace and he wrote a detailed description of it," Hayde said.
    According to the plans, the palace will be built next to Janos Kocsi's Kincsem Equestrian Park, named after Hungary's most famous racing horse.
    Kocsi believes the arrival of billions of euros of EU funding in Hungary later this year will be the saviour for a project to memorialise a man termed "the Scourge of God" by the papacy for his ravaging of Europe in the fifth century.
    "Attila was called in to help in local conflicts, to restore justice," Kocsi said. "It's a misconception that Attila was a barbarian. He spoke six languages and the whole of Europe was at his feet. It was a different world then and he was the greatest of his time," he added.
    Kocsi has already put up what he believes is the only public statue of Attila, who died in 453 AD, and now needs 6 billion Hungarian forints (33.19 million USD) to complete the palace.
    He claims that Tapioszentmarton was home to one of Attila's palaces. He says evidenced found in the discovery of a Scythian golden deer in the 1960s, claim that the nearby "Attila domb" or Attila hill has mystical healing powers.
    While Kocsi's powers failed to influence the Reuters journalists on the hill, others appeared to respond to small gestures by Kocsi's fingers and raised their hands involuntarily.
    "Normally I feel cold, I've got aches and pains everywhere and I am doubled up, but after coming back from here then I am okay for a month," said Judit Mazik, from Turkeve in eastern Hungary, who stayed in the hotel one week.
    Kocsi said there had been 5,000 people at the Attila mound the previous weekend and that his hotel was booked to the end of the 2007 season.
    Tapioszentmarton was also the birthplace of champion race-horse Kincsem, a Hungarian national icon and filly who won all her 54 races across Europe in the 1870s and 1880s. That proves the place is magic, Kocsi said.
    "We have to put all these things together; the energy radiation, the birth of Kincsem here, the wonder mare, and Attila. Hungarian lore says that three trials means it is true," Kocsi said.
    Hungarians, like many other nations, have national stories about where they originate from, and one of these relates to their descent from the Huns.
    Despite protests by most historians that claims of Hunnic ancestry are overblown, Attila is still a popular boy's name in this country of 10 million people which joined the European Union in 2004.
    Archaeologists at the National Museum point out that the Scythian Golden Deer artifact found in the area of the Attila mound is no evidence for the existence of Attila's Palace as there was no direct link between the Scythians and the Huns.
    The Hun-Hungarian connection is simply a well-crafted legend, historians and archeologists say.
    "The Hun-Hungarian kinship first appeared at the 13th century chronicle Kezai. The Kezai chronicle was a biased work, it was made for order. Kezai's aim with the chronicle was to give a kind of identity for the period's upper and middle nobility, and this is where the idea first appear that the Hungarian nobility is descendant of the Huns," archeologist Zsuzsa Hajnal said.
    But the Hun-Hungarian legend is proving stronger than historical evidence. Last year, people claiming descent from the Hun emperor's mounted warriors sought status as an ethnic minority. The noble Eszterhazy family, once patrons of the composer Haydn, redrew their family tree to show they were descended from Attila; along with the bible's Noah.
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