A műemlékek sokszínűsége (A 28. Egri Nyári Egyetem előadásai 1998 Eger, 1998)

Előadások / Presentations - TÓTH Ernő: Conserving our bridges and protecting

by János Arany, Gyula Illyés and others, and paintings by Károly Lötz, Mihály Zichy and István Csók. Bridges are passive participants in, and witnesses to, our past. The artistic significance of bridges needs more proof. Small bridges blend into the landscape and do not dominate it, but the great ones are of defining power in rural and urban landscapes. Such are the Danube bridges in Budapest, the nine-span bridge in Hortobágy, the Veszprém Valley Bridge, etc. The place of bridges in architectural thinking has been discussed in most detail by Imre Gáli, and before him many great engineers wrote on the aesthetics of bridges. Bridges can be artistic constructions, even those on a less monumental scale than the much painted bridges in Germany, Italy and Spain. Most bridges in this country, new or old, cannot be said to be of great historical or architectural value, but there are among them many worthy of preservation by several criteria. LESS-KNOWN BRIDGES Bridges are to some extent the neglected children" of architectural history. There are many reasons for this - lack of information, lack of interest, or insufficient artistic, architectural and historical study. Hungarian books and albums on architectural history, however erudite, generally only illustrate and discuss the Chain Bridge and the „stone bridge" in Hortobágy. In István Genthon's three-volume great work there are only four bridges among the 1182 illustrations (apart from those last mentioned, the „Stone Saints" bridge in Vác and the Zádor Bridge in Karcag). Imre Gall's book, Régi magyar hidak (Old Hungarian Bridges) was a pioneering work, covering more than 150 arched bridges, including a detailed history of some forty of them based on archive research. The descriptions of some bridges were also published in Muemléhédelem (Monument Protection) and Mélyépítési Szemle (Civil Engineering Review). It is unfortunate that only 2000 copies of the book were printed, and it did not become well known. Hungarian travel books and atlases only cover 10-14 bridges, with many mistakes and unrepresentative selection. I am sure that the architectural heritage, including bridges, can only be protected with the involvement of broad sections of society. Naturally we who work on the subject of bridges can also do much to spread awareness, and although albums and historical writings can only be published in large numbers if they cover the whole of architecture, we do what we can, myself included, to fill some gaps through research. To date, bridge histories of five counties have been written in illustrated books capable of use as sources, but there is a need for co-operation on a large scale between historians, archaeologists, geographers, archivists, local historians, architects and engineers. This is the way to fill in the blank patches of the heritage, and to work towards the discovery and preservation of our surviving treasures. AN OVERVIEW OF HUNGARIAN BRIDGES There are some 11,000 bridges in Hungary, although the numbers are only certain for those on public roads. Here there are 5900 bridges, covering 1 million m

2 in area, and having a value of 200 billion Ft. From the Roman age, only small fragments remain: the Aquincum viaduct, the bridgeheads on the Danube Bend, the valley-end dams in Öskü and Pátka, and on the Öskü dam, perhaps the culvert too. Of bridges