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

The stairts of the old Tabán quarter

A plaque on his former house and a bust in the street recall the memory of the writer who, in 1989, killed himself in America. Suppressed for forty years, his works are among the most read books in his native Hungary today.

The Granite Stairs make an appearance in Dezső Kosztolányi’s novel Anna Édes. And that is no coincidence, as the writer used to have his home nearby, at 12 Tábor utca.

The stairs of the old Tabán quarter

"Sir, there were houses standing here once, and what houses! And there were streets twisting and turning among those houses, and what streets they were!'' That is how Antal Szerb remembers the place in his Budapesti kalauz Manlakók számára (A Guide to Budapest for Martians, a book published in 1935 with graphic plates by Sándor Kolozsváry). To be sure, nothing much survives of the old Tabán in general, and only three of its stairways: the Masons’ Stairs (by the tennis courts), the Shepherds’ Stairs (opposite the statue of György Dózsa) and the Orvos utca stairs (at the end of Krisztina körút).

<9