Tanulmányok Budapest Múltjából 29. (2001)

A BUDAI KIRÁLYI PALOTA MINT ÉPÍTÉSZETI EGYÜTTES; A PALOTA ÉPÍTÉSTÖRTÉNETE A LEGÚJABB KUTATÁSOK ALAPJÁN - Alföldy Gábor: A budai királyi várkert az újkorban : (építéstörténeti vázlat) 267-292

GÁBOR ALFÖLDY THE ROYAL PALACE GARDENS IN MODERN TIMES Summary The public and the profession have always been fond of the Royal Palace Gardens. Many a great artist, as well as exemplary main­tenance have contributed to achieving its high standards. A great many descriptions and drawings about the garden and its history have come down to us, and an especially abundant col­lection of maps and miscellaneous documents. The exploration of these has revealed a fair number of sources previously uninves­tigated by scholars. This paper seeks to give a chronological, source-based summary overview of the garden's history. The Royal Palace and the surrounding area was laid waste during the siege of Buda in 1686. That marked the end of the period of the famous Renaissance Palace Gardens, originally built by King Matthias (1458-1490). Sandwiched between the mediaeval walls and adjoining the new baroque palace on its eastern front, the small pleasure garden depicted on a 1730s map is the first image of the modern-time Palace Gardens. A map dating from 1749 indicates gardens in the area of the round bastion (the Rondella), too. When the palace was converted and extended (1749-1770) during Maria Theresa's reign, it came up that a bigger garden should be built, adjoining the palace. It is more than obvious that the new garden was designed by Franz Anton Hillebrandt, Viennese archi­tect. In January 1768 Adrian van Steckhoven, director of the Imperial Gardens at Schönbrunn, travelled to Buda to discuss the pro­posed garden. The first known caretaker of the new garden was the Klagenfurt landscape architect Joseph Georg Tille, whose activ­ity in Buda was first mentioned by the sources in April 1769. The new garden was built at the eastern front of the palace, and incor­porated horse-chestnut alleys, and a centrally-located, octagonal, mansard-roofed, trellised pavilion which was pulled down in 1789. Erected on a small round bastion on the garden's north-eastern corner stood a small entertainment room. Hungary's newly appointed palatine, Alexander Leopold —younger brother of Leopold II and his successor Francis, emperor of Austria and king of Hungary— moved to the palace in 1790. Although, due his early death, he only lived there for five years, he made significant alterations to the Palace Gardens. In 1792 it was decided that a simple conservatory and a small gardener's lodge be built. The same year Dávid Mayer was appointed new Gardener of the Palace Gardens. According to a site drawing dating from March 1793, the gardens by then occupied the entire area enclosed by the mediaeval walls. Not for long, however. A year or two later Alexander Leopold commissioned a large-scale landscaped garden outside the cas­tle walls. One —aborted— plan reveals that the garden was going to be built on the western slopes of Castle Hill, in place of the Matthias-era Renaissance Gardens. However, because it was deemed prohibitively expensive, the garden was eventually built on the empty southern slopes, around 1795. Its recently discovered plan essentially portrays the accomplished garden; only few of its elements were ultimately left out. This plan included the pseudo-Gothic, artificial ruin-like "peasant house," erected on the remains of the real Gothic gatehouse by the round bastion. After Alexander Leopold's death in 1795, his younger brother, the Archduke Joseph (governor and later palatine) moved into the Royal Palace in Buda. Founder of the famous parks on Margaret Island and at Alcsut, Joseph gave high priority to beautifying his new environment. A garden design dating from 1807 reveals the Palatine's development concept. The unsigned plan might have been created by a certain Anton Tost, who was trained at the Imperial Gardens at Schönbrunn, and was for four decades Head Gar­dener of the Palace Gardens. His father, Joseph Tost, had been Chief Gardener of the Imperial Gardens (and later the Schlosshof); his brothers employees at the Palatine's other gardens in Pest and Buda. Another mock ruin was built using the mediaeval stone carvings found lying about and even a Roman-period gravestone. Other garden buildings included a dove house, a small hermitage, and an arbour. Green-fingered Palatine Joseph enriched his Palace Gardens with many a botanical rarity. According to an 1826 inventory, it had 2,440 species and varieties of plants. For example, period descriptions mention over 300 types of rose. The war of independence that followed the 1848 revolution in Pest, together with the siege of the castle in 1849, badly damaged the gardens. The ruins were removed after 1850, and the restoration was completed by 1857. On the whole, reconstruction little affected the previous structure of the Palace Gardens, but new areas were given over to landscaping. The baroque parts of the gar­den lost their original form then. The damaged or destroyed garden buildings were either renovated (e.g. the peasant house), or replaced by more grandiose ones (e.g. the conservatory). The new garden buildings were designed by Carl Ehrenberger, Carl Neuwirth, Joseph Weiss, and József Holczer, who were also in charge of the palace reconstruction. The Head Gardener Anton Tost died in 1849. His successor was Károly Mráz who managed the gardens from 1861 until 1906. From the 1870s to the turn of the century the Palace Gardens enjoyed continuous growth. It came up in 1873 that a kind of flam­boyant "garden fence" should be built on the Danube edge of the Gardens. Miklós Ybl, chief architect of the palace reconstruction project in the 1880s, built his elongated Palace Gardens Bazaar in September 1879, achieving harmonic connection between the Gardens and the Danube embankment. In 1881 the Gardens were expanded to the east slopes of Castle Hill according to the plans of the Pest landscape architect Károly Weber. In the 1890s the development of the Palace Gardens gathered momentum. Certain garden buildings were converted again, some were demolished, and new ones were built. These works were performed by renowned Hungarian experts. In 1896 Keresztély 291

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