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

Roaming the mysterious tunnels of the Parliament building

■ The air-ductó of the Parliament

ditionally served as the home of the maintenance staff. The steam arrives, by way of a public works tunnel, to the distribution chambers under the building, from where it is conducted to the 1250 radiators or the 54 heating chambers in the basement. Designed to allow the easy passage of a person walking along it, the tunnel has come to be almost impassable by now, for the original tubes have been replaced with 1-1.5 metre wide ones, which impede movement, not to mention the fact that the iron grid placed flush with the building has been replaced with a solid wall.

The ventilation system designed by Steindl obeys the laws of physics in that the air sucked in from the square is mixed with the required amount of hot steam arriving via the tubes and humidified with water evaporating from tin vessels. From here the air rises, through air vents in the floor, towards the ceiling where its movement is controlled with fans. Stale air leaves the building via the attic on the front facing the Danube. The system has by now been modified to the extent that the cooling of the debating chamber is facilitated by an air-conditioning system. The enormous engine of the system is also located in the basement.

The situation was somewhat simpler in the first half of the 20th century, when the suction tunnels of the system reached the middle of Kossuth tér. At that time there were fountains playing here, which made the downward flowing air that much more humid. The instalment of the Kossuth and Rákóczi stat10