Grand Boulevard (Budapest) the reconstruction, which cost altogether 3.4 billion forints. There are three further ring roads in Budapest: Grand Boulevard (Budapest) Nagykörút or Grand Boulevard (sometimes "Great Boulevard", lit. "Big Ring Road") is one of the most central and busiest parts of Budapest, a major thoroughfare built by 1896, Hungary's Millennium. It forms a semicircle connecting two bridges of the Danube, Margaret Bridge on the north and Petőfi Bridge on the south. Usually the part inside and around this semicircle is counted as the city centre of Budapest (see Belváros). Nagykörút is actually a colloquial name of its five parts which connect
Siege of Budapest the old town. The Red Army, after a much-needed pause in hostilities, resumed its offensive on 19 December. On 26 December, a road linking Budapest to Vienna was seized by Soviet troops, thereby completing the encirclement. The Nazi-supported "Leader of the Nation" ("Nemzetvezető"), Ferenc Szálasi, had already fled from the city on 9 December. As a result of the Soviet link-up, nearly 33,000 German and 37,000 Hungarian soldiers, as well as over 800,000 civilians, became trapped within the city. Refusing to authorize a withdrawal, Adolf Hitler had declared Budapest a fortress city ("Festung Budapest"), which was to be defended to