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

From the Muddy Baths to Szent Gellért tér

The motor traffic ever on the increase since the 1960s had made the air in the Tunnel all but unbearable in the rush hour. Thus an artificial ventilation system was installed in the northern part of the Tunnel. This was done through the broadening-out and reconstruction of the dehydration ducts built earlier and the installation of ventilation engines in the middle section of the Tunnel. The system brings as much fresh air into the Tunnel as is required by the fluctuations of the traffic inside and the changes of the wind outside; escaping towards the Clark Ádám tér or the Alagút utca gate, this fresh air blows throughout the entire Tunnel. Although this technical innovation resulted in significant improvement, bilingual signs at the entrances warn that crossing through the Tunnel on foot can be a health hazard.

From the Muddy Baths to Szent Gel lért tér

The attention of those standing at the busy tram stops of Szent Gellért tér is divided between the St. Stephen statue (by Pál Kő), turning its back on the city, and the monumental stone cross moved back to where it had been before World war II; and yet, what really catches the eye is the huge vault over the entrance to St. Ivan's Cave. The cave was named after Ivan, a medieval hermit who is believed to have healed the infirm with the thermal waters welling up nearby.

The cave with its large entrance hole has served as a shelter for man since prehistoric times. Pest, which developed where the Roman settlement Contra Aquincum had been (incidentally, Gellért Hill was called Pest Hill at the time), was located originally at a place of crossing over the Danube. Its Buda side was called Kisebb Pest (Pest Minor) or Kispest, for short, later to be rebaptised Alhévíz (Lower Thermal Waters). The word pedt or pe&tera is used in Slavic languages to denote a cave, a pit or a kiln. (The caves called Kőpest and Büdöspest — Stone Pest or Stenching Pest — were named in reference to this usage). The cave with its remarkably large entrance is thus likely to have played an important part in the naming of the city. (Ofen, the later, German, name of Buda also means oven or an oven-like cave.)

The large hole was used as a cave dwelling in the last century. The owners of the St. Gellért Medicinal Hotel could no longer tolerate the rubbish- filled hole and its occasional residents opposite the entrance of the posh establishment. Thus in 1924 it was decided that a 'Hungarian Lourdes’ was to be established here by converting the cave into a shrine. As part of the recon40