Budapest Régiségei 37. (2003)

Pető Mária: A gellérthegyi Kálvária 297-301

A GELLÉRTHEGYI KÁLVÁRIA CALVARY ON GELLERT HILL After more than a quarter of a century from the reconquest of Buda, in 1715 a simple calvary was erected on the top of Gellért Hill behind the ruinous but still existent Turkish fortress. It was a Golgotha scene: a wooden crucifix and two stone figures standing on a basement. It was frequently depicted on engravings of Buda in the 18th century, though typically of the age, it had some variants. The renewing of the decaying calvary was necessary, therefore in 1795 Mihály Fühl, citizen of the quarter named Tabán, commenced a fund raising. The collecting of the money, and consequently the reconstruction works lasted long, it had not been finished until the end of the first decades of the 19th century. The canonica visitatio of 1822 mentions it as the one built recently F S. Beudant, a French scholar and traveller on visiting Hungary went to see the new sights of Gellért Hill, the observatory From here he descended towards the west and saw the small chapel of the calvary too. The niches of the calvary stations were to be found along Sánc Street, later along Szirtes Street - in a map from 1836 the sites of the stations are indicated. The Baroque chapel of the Calvary was still standing behind the large fortress of the Citadel on the north-eastern plateau of the hill. In the course of the World War II the area of Gellért Hill suffered seriös damages, the remains of the chapel and the stations were pulled down at the beginning of the 1950s. The large-scale ground-levelling accompanied also with exploding the rock demolished even the traces of the former Calvary 299