Szimpla kert

Behind this gate lies a courtyard with a tall chimney, secondhand furniture and a converted car. Until 2004 this was an empty complex marked for demolition.

After the war this neighbourhood emptied out. Under communism nothing was maintained here for decades, and after 1989 whole buildings were slated to be torn down, as you saw at the wall on Király utca. That made property here dirt cheap.

Szimpla started in 2001 as an ordinary café on Kertész utca, a few streets away. In 2004 Ábel Zsendovits and a group of friends took over this condemned building too and fitted it out with whatever they could lay their hands on. The courtyard became an open-air cinema, and that is how Hungary's first romkocsma came to be, the ruin pub.

The idea was to leave the decay in place rather than hide it away. People loved it, dozens of imitators sprang up in these same streets, and the neighbourhood nobody wanted to live in became one of the best-known nightlife areas in Europe. People still live above the pubs. We walk on towards Klauzál tér.