Szablyár Péter: Step by step - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)

The Queen of all Budapest stairs. the Fishermen' Bastion

Frigyes Schulek chanced upon the cavities that he was to name "casamatte". "Upon its opening, this casamatta revealed quantities of skull-fragments and several skulls preserved intact, the latter of which were transferred to the anthropological institute by Professor Aurél Török,” as the report of 1897 made by the Board of Public Works recorded. Altering his earlier designs, Schulek excluded all but the most essential — that is, structurally indispensable — architectural elements from the structures to be raised above the remains of the chapel, whose entrances he walled in in such a manner as to allow for easy subsequent demolition. His plans to make the chapel accessible from the statue of St Stephen fell through due to insufficient funding.

After nearly a hundred years of Sleeping-Beauty-style dormancy, the archaeological digs and conservation work undertaken in 1996-97, the municipality of the Buda Castle took the initiative to reopen the Chapel of St Michael to the public as something more than a memorial site from 20 August 1997 on: the chapel was turned into an exhibition hall of a unique atmosphere. Regrettably, access to the chapel has once again been restricted to short periods of time in recent years.

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