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

Romanticism larga and small

■ The stain of the Pest Vigadó Concert Halt, 1873

Frigyes Feszl's chef-d’oeuvre, the Pest Vigadó

The first Vigadó Concert Hall of Pest, designed by Mihály Pollack, fell victim to the siege of Pest-Buda in 1849. It was on its foundations that the new Vigadó was built to designs by Frigyes Feszi (1821—84). The front facing the Danube features an arcaded ground-floor between the gable-topped corner projections; above this is a row of lengthened windows in Moorish style, topped by a frieze decorated with the heads of kings and the country's coat-of-arms. A major part of the interior decoration is of prefabricated and mass-manufactured elements, such as cast-iron pillars, grills, stuccos and rosettes, and the increasingly popular employment of stencilled patterns. Aside from its ceremonial hall, the most spectacular space is that of the central staircase, which was positioned by Feszi in such a way as to allow patrons arriving in elegant carriages to ride up to the bottom of the stairs and then to exit the building in the direction of another street.

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