N. Kósa Judit - Szablyár Péter: Underground Buda - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)
A magic forest of pillars inside Gellért Hill
catering units, perhaps an exhibition hall), it was the one envisaging a natural-history exhibition hall that the Ybl-prize winning architect András Zsuffa worked into a detailed design. Given the fact that the cave’s lower layer of crystal had completely been taken away to render the floor passable, Zsuffa designed a concave, elliptical mirror-surface for the middle of the cave to suggest its original, elliptical shape. He intended to line the side walls with glass cabinets in the shape of the argonite crystal. A play of sound and light was to have greeted the visitor together, of course, with a brief introduction about the cave's creation and the formations it contained. The plans came to nought. All that can now be hoped for is that in the framework of the reconstruction of the Gellért tér area, these underground miracles will be made accessible to the public. A magic forest of pillars inside Gellért Hill If you have been to the Sánc utca reservoirs on the northwest side of Gellért Hill, operated by the Budapest Waterworks Company, you will have no difficulty imagining Jules Verne’s journey to the centre of the earth. Although the floodlights can hardly pierce the green mass of water, it is clearly visible through the observation windows how the thick rows of columns lean over the surface of the water. On the rare occasion when the reservoirs are emptied and visitors are allowed into them, it becomes apparent that the huge chambers resemble a piano in their shape. On such occasions even stray sounds lose their way as they reverberate around from the columns towering ten metres above the ground. Each of the two reservoirs has a water storage capacity of 40 thousand cubic metres. Shapes are rounded off and round columns are used to allow drinking water to flow unimpeded everywhere and thus avoid stagnation. Built between 1974 and 1980, the reservoir is the largest of its kind in Budapest. Today there are 45 reservoirs functioning in the city, with a combined capacity of 300,000 cubic metres. Drinking water is never allowed to stay for more than a day in the reservoirs before it is conducted into the city's mains system, being replaced here with fresh water from the wells. The reservoir at Gellért Hill was refilled mainly from the Káposztásmegyer water supply centre, but since the new collecting mains was built in 1996, it can be filled with water from the Csepel wells, too. The piano-shaped pools, which are a major attraction and thus are regu45
