N. Kósa Judit - Szablyár Péter: Underground Buda - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)

Turkish cellars, wells and caverns - the Castle Caves of Buda

In the 1870s, when the Church of Our Lady was being restored, rock cellars half filled with mud were discovered under Szentháromság tér (Holy Trinity Square). It was probably this discovery that moved the Engineering Department of the capital’s municipality to commission engineer Ignác Schubert to chart the cavities in Castle Hill. Although the city council dismissed as unfounded press rumours about the dangers posed by abandoned rock caves, some of which were filled with water, it decreed that the charted holes be filled up.

Schubert's survey of 1882—86 uncovered some 120 rock caves between Szent György tér and Bécsi kapu tér (St. George’s Square and Vienna Gate Square). Maps drawn on the basis of the survey on a scale of 1:250 included the wells, the ventilation ducts and even the geological formations, as well as the precise ground plan of the cellars. Unfortunately, the original of these manuscript maps, whose natural-historical interest is not negligible, no longer survives; the details that we know of them come from the drawing used for the investigation of the reasons why the road paving collapsed in 1897 and from other, later, versions and copies.

■ Cave well in Onzágház utca

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