Borza Tibor (szerk.): A Magyar Kereskedelmi és Vendéglátóipari Múzeum évkönyve 1976 (Budapest, Magyar Kereskedelmi és Vendéglátóipari Múzeum, 1976)
Borsos László: A középkori kereskedelem és vendéglátás építészeti emlékei Budán
| ~LÁSZLÓ BORSOS I THE ARCHITECTURAL RELICS OF THE RETAIL AND CATERING TRADES OF BUDA IN THE MIDDLE AGES After the establishing of the Hungarian State the Roman frontier town and Danubian ford, at the crossing of the east-west road and the water-way, grew into the most important commercial town of Hungary: Pest. The Centre of Buda Castle on the opposite bank, built after the Tartar invasion, was the present Dísz square, which after the church there was called Szent György tér (S. George's Square). The ground floors of the burghers' houses surrounding the square were occupied by traders and craftsmen, the middle of the square (into which two streets lead) by the stall of petty-traders and the eastern section by the booths of market-women. Markets were held in the square. One can hardly recognize the shops and workshops on the ground-plans of buildings built on narrow, transversal lots with enclosed courts. The houses in the middle of the square built into rocks differ from them ("stain kremen"). The narrow, one direction, single-celled houses were complemented by tracts and annexes and so transformed into bigger closed blocks. The discovered consoles of shopwindows, air holes, doors, fore-roofs point to their original purpose. There is a wealth of material connected with the retailing of wine by growers but only few written and architectural relics connected with catering medieval Buda. The wine cellars generally on two levels with annexed caverns and the variously formed niches built into the gateways and furnished with seats, which were used for retailing wine. These niches, usually with two seats, were connected into series and tneir Gothic and trefoil-like partitions were decorated by consoles, trellises and foliage. The so called "sedilia" appeared later, with 3—4 seats, and were roofed over by segmental arches or semicircles. Such a series of niches was discovered in one of the halls of our museum as well. Niches with seats were found in 35 gateways of 70 medieval houses on Buda Castle Hill. 76
