A 175-year-old institution in Hungary has ended its historical run, as this week Budapest’s Vidámpark closed doors to all but a handful of its theme park attractions, another victim of economic malaise – and perhaps simply because of changing times.
n its colorful history, Vidampárk had continued to entertain through everything from the 19th-century reimagining of the public space as a fair-type exhibition of inventions (telephone exchange creator Tivadar Puskas is known to have displayed his gadgets there) to bombing runs during World War II to a disastrous fire – not to mention redesigns and refurbishment with every change in government from empire to socialist to capitalist state.
