A citizen of each European member state has been invited to participate in the exhibition, selected because they experienced some event which was of importance to Europe during the past 50 years. The UK's representative is a man who helped build the Chunnel. Hungary's contributor to the exhibition is Gyula Csics, who, as a boy, wrote a diary of the events of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
Csics is now the director of the Tatabánya City Library and a member of the Hungarian Association of Librarians.
Speaking at the opening of the exhibition on Thursday, European Commission Vice President Siim Kallas said that, while Europe has kept its differences in terms of culture, language and tradition, the continent has established a unity based on shared values, such as freedom, democracy, the rule of law, human rights and equal opportunity.
The Tour & Taxis site owes its name to the 'von Thurn und Tassis' family, who founded the European postal service. The von Thurn und Tassis family owned the marshy area which bordered the Port of Brussels. It used this land as grazing land for its famous 'Horse Post' horses. As the centuries moved on, the name of the family and of the associated site took on the French form of "Tour & Taxis".
The first traces of the von Thurn und Tassis family date back to the 12th century, in the region of Italian city Bergamo. Under the Hapsburgs, Frans de Tassis was appointed Master of the Post in 1501 by Philip the Fair. The mission of Frans de Tassis was to organise the transmission of information between the various principal and royal courts of the Holy Germanic Empire. This investiture marked the beginning of the development of the postal activities of the Thurn und Tassis family, largely relying on the 'Horse Post' and the 'Masters of the Post'.
While the Horse Posts went from city to city carrying letters, the Masters of the Post managed their relays and tried to claim the highest number of connections as possible for themselves.
Based on this revolutionary system, the Thurn und Tassis family built up a veritable monopoly of postal links throughout all of Europe, from the Netherlands to Italy, from Austria to Spain. Brussels lay at the centre of these European postal routes.
For 355 years the family reigned supreme without ever sharing this sector. On the eve of the French Revolution, the Thurn und Tassis enterprise reached its peak. As national postal services start to make their appearance, the family lost its influence and withdrew from the business in 1867.
In the 19th century, a gigantic complex for customs clearance and for the warehousing of merchandise under customs control was built at the Tour & Taxis site. It became the central hub for merchandise transit in the capital for over a century.
In the 20th century, the Tour & Taxis site became the first in history to bring together complementary activities: customs collection, merchandise warehousing, and its transport by rail, water and road. Tour & Taxis reached its peak during the 60's, with more than 3,000 workers on the site.
As with all European customs warehouses, the site gradually began to lose its reason for being with the opening up of European borders. On top of this, the evolution of transport, with the emphasis on motorways, led to the belief that railway and waterway transport was no longer competitive.
The buildings continued to be used up to 1987, as warehouse zones. But with mounting maintenance costs, they were put up for sale.
Tour & Taxis, little by little, was abandoned. Several projects were put forward for reconverting the site, but none came to fruition, as they were unrealistic and too alienated from the needs of the surrounding district.
A new future began in December 2001, with the purchase of the site by 'Project T&T'. The mission of Project T&T is to develop and manage the Tour &Taxis site.
Source: Múlt-kor / Hungarian News Agency (MTI) / www.tourtaxis.com
