Benkő Andrea: A Guide to Petőfi Literary Museum (Budapest, 2009)
The Károlyi Palace
THE KAROLYI PALACE historic # m -,/ An important relic of the capital's neoclassical architecture, only the outside walls of the present Palace originate from the 17th and 18th centuries. Its architectural emphases and decorations were, almost without exception, built in the reform period between 1832-1841, during the extensive reconstruction work associated with the Károlyi family name. The building is the most important of the 19th-century aristocratic palaces in Pest, and its architecture is in keeping with its cultural and historical significance and the moments that it witnessed. With its balanced, pure forms and restful proportions, the two-storey building appears unexpectedly from among the commotion, among the high buildings of the narrow streets in the inner city. The strong, broken dividing cornices, the windows connected with arched, transom architecture lead the eye across the main front of the building. Above the three-wing doorway opening in the middle, a balcony juts out with its stone consoles and ironwork. The stepped gable above is crowned by the Count's coat of arms of the Károlyi family. On the escutcheon is the family's heraldic animal, the sparrow hawk, ascending with a heart in its claws. The Ferenczy Street side maintains a neoclassical division similar to that of the main front. The side entrance with a straight hood mould is flanked by two Tuscan pilasters. The side on Henszlmann Street was built after 1934, after the demolition of the neighbouring Harruckern-Wenckheim house, as a careful adaptation of the original architecture. On walking through the woodbrick-paved carriage-entrance, you come to a grassy courtyard behind the main front of the Palace, I which is surrounded by the U-shaped wings of the ; building. Railings separate it from the recently renovated Károlyi Park, which once belonged to the Palace j and extended it as far as Magyar Street. It has been I public property since 1928. From the garden, the sheer size of the impressive, two-storey inner front of the courtyard is revealed before us. Above the three-axle middle-bay doorways ending in a tympanum, the central motive is once more a balcony, onto which the arched windows of the Museum Library open. Through the triple, round-arched entrance opening in the middle of the vestibule, we come to the three- flight red marble stairs decorated with cast-iron work and candelabra. Above the dividing cornice on the main stairway run arched, shoulder-ridged blind arcades with two pilasters with ornamental capitals stretching up to the projecting cornice between each of them. The arched, shoulder-ridged form of the three
