Urbs - Magyar várostörténeti évkönyv 4. (Budapest, 2009)
Recenziók
440 Abstracts inhabitants of the centre of the similarly defenceless royal estates in (Ó)Buda also found refuge there. Contemporaries regularly called the new settlements vár (castle). Indeed, this was the period when the first walled towns on the classic Western medieval pattern were established in the Kingdom of Hungary. The island of Fehérvár and the hilltop of Buda both had a naturally elongated form, and this strongly influenced the structure of the new towns. Neither had enough space to lay out streets and plots on a regular grid, and at first sight there is no sign of the systematic form typical of founded towns. A detailed analysis, however, shows that the structure of the towns did follow a plan, one in which defensive considerations were paramount. This study uses the example of Buda to demonstrate what research can reveal about a settlement which is poor in written sources. A study of the plots found during archaeological excavations has revealed a standard sized type with a distinctive mode of building. These plots are 19-20 metres wide and twice as deep, approximately 38-40 metres. Since excavations cannot be carried out on the entire town, we have to turn to another method, urban ground plan analysis. The ground and basement floors are decisive for this study. We attempted to apply the data of the town’s earliest house census (1696) and plot survey (1687) to the present-day map and the medieval building remains, and thereby to determine the standard size plots we found during the excavations. The analysis revealed a system of standard plots throughout the Castle District. These may be considered the result of artificial and deliberate parcelling of land at the time the town was founded. The detailed and painstaking work of reconstruction has yielded a comprehensive picture, the basis for further conclusions. In the next analysis we will consider the following four aspects: 1. the street frontage line of the plots, i.e. the direction and route of the streets, 2. the blocks of buildings showing the standard parcels of land, 3. the orientation of plots, and 4. the location of ecclesiastical buildings. ORSOLYA MÉSZÁROS New topographical insights into the south urban core of the late medieval town of Visegrád (2003-2004 excavations) Archaeological excavations on the area of the late medieval town of Visegrád started in the 1950s, supplementing ongoing archaeological and art history research concentrating on the castle and the palace. In 2003-2004, the excavations covered on a 13,000 nr part of the historic town near the Danube. The results have contributed much to our topographical knowledge of the 14th—15th century town.
