It's 50 years since Russian tanks rolled into Budapest to crush the 1956 uprising. David Sutton visited a battle-scarred city of caves, churches, spas and statues. Photos by the author.

Budapest is like all European cities, just more so. Built up, layer upon layer, over the centuries, its bewildering variety of structures – both above and below ground – map continuities, disjunctions and historical fault-lines, and bear witness to war, invasion and occupation. Budapest shows the traces left by such grand historical forces more nakedly than Rome, London or Paris – after all, the city has been bombarded, burned and blown up many times through the centuries as Hungary struggled, mostly in vain, to preserve her nationhood; poor old Buda Castle, it's said, has been rebuilt some 86 times since it first went up in the 13th century.