Demeter Zsófia – Gelencsér Ferenc: Székesfehérvár Anno… Pillanatképek egy város életéből. – A Fejér Megyei Múzeumegyesület kiadványai 6. – Szent István Király Múzeum közleményei: B sorozat 38 (1990)

SUMMARY The significance of Székesfehérvár was due to its special relationship to Hungarian royal power, its site at the intersection of important high-roads (leading to Italy and the Holy Land) and to its strategic role throughout the Middle Ages. Since the 18th с all these factors began to lose their importance and the town ceased to be the capital of a country or even of a part of it, and its function was reduc ed to a limited sphere. On account of its legal status as royal free borough and of being the chief town of both the county and the diocese it was mainly its administrative role that gained much importance during the period discussed, with addititonal educational and cultural functions resulting from its high-schools, its seminary and its theatre. This volume presents snapshots covering the history of the town from 1860 to the festive events of 1938. The two dates are rather obvious, since both of them can be attached to significant milestones in the recent history of the town: to the railway building, on the one hand, and to the 90th anniversary of the death of St. Stephen, the first King of Hungary (1938), marked also by a large-scale program of modernization and urbanization. The exhibits certainly do not include all the pictures taken during those years, we have much rather chosen the most typical and so far unknown photographs, illustrating most clearly the changes in the appearance of the town. The material of the book was being gathered since nearly ten years; we tried to use and to reproduce a wide range of pictures, ranging from amateur snapshots and picture postcards to the illustrations of minor publications. The choice of contemporary photos presents an overall view of the town drawn form outside towards the centre. Of course, the most fully to be recorded where the buildings and streets of the inner town and its closer surroundings, since, as usually, the most attractive and valuable buildings have been photographed and published on postcards. On the other hand, it proved to be rather accidental or even impossible to draw an authentic picture of the suburbs and outskirts with the help of photos. In the period at issue Székesfehérvár could be attained by railway or on