Faurest, Kristin: Ten spaces - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)

Károlyi-kert

■ Károlyi-kert. 1965

1904 bust by Ede Kallós — with a beautiful Art Nouveau base - of revolutionary politician Daniel Irányi.

The square, true to its history, still bears the verdant atmosphere of the 19th century English landscape, with lots of winding paths punctuated by small open meadows, almost like a London park in miniature. Unfortunately, there are still signs prohibiting stepping on the grass - a rule that has happily fallen out of fashion elsewhere in the city's public green spaces — for what does an inner city dweller crave more than to stretch out on some soft grass? There is also a pleasant surprise — an immaculately clean public restroom facility that, in spite of the two friendly chatting matrons sitting at its doorway, is in fact free of charge. The structure itself is as historical as it is practical, being one of the original iron-frame public toilets that Vilmos Beetz patented in 1901 and that graced many of Budapest's public spaces.

The square’s appeal - like with nearly any urban space — is heavily determined by its immediate surroundings. A new café on the Magyar utca entrance side has sidewalk tables and chairs with the effect of expanding the small square and making it even more inviting. There is, too, the 'borrowed scenery’ of the spires of the University Church (built between 1725-44 on the site of a

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