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

The renewed phantom of Miklós Ybl in the Opera

with ice when necessary. This air would then pour into the empty space beneath the auditorium (this room, whose height permitted people to walk about, had an important part to play in the overall acoustic effect) from where it rose, through the crevices of the floor, to be directed towards the roof via air extractors fitted into the chandelier.

The vaulted, walled-in tunnels of the ducts are still visible and the fresh drafts inside them send a chill up one’s spine.

Before reconstruction, heating, too, was provided by the boilers of the building. The boiler-room is in the basement above the air-shaft. Coke was loaded into the basement via an opening beneath the Andrássy út driveway, from where the fuel was conveyed in a coal tub rolled along a narrow-gauge track to the four huge boilers, whose operation was controlled with brass levers fixed to marble tablets.

This old equipment has been replaced with a modern heating system, too, which uses hot water from the operating plant in Hajós utca. It was for safety considerations that the boilers were installed away from the Opera House itself when reconstruction was carried out.

The pipeline is located in the corridor under Hajós utca connecting the operation plant, where the rehearsal rooms are also housed, with the Opera itself. The corridor was built as early as 1979—80 with the same method that had been used by the predecessors of the builders with the construction of the "small''

■ The óink iloti

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