Szablyár Péter: Step by step - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)
The Rebirth of styles - the stairs of Historicism
viding for the erection of the building. Earmarked in the law for the building was a budget of 1,200 crowns and another sum of 3,200 crowns for new acquisitions to be added to the collection. Although Samu Pecz won first prize with his designs submitted for the competition announced in 1898, the final drawings were ordered from Albert Schickedanz and Fülöp Herczog, and it was this duo who were commissioned to give the whole square a uniform appearance. The finished building received some very hostile criticism: some missed a clear national character, while others were unhappy with what they found an excessive number of columns on the various fronts. The central facade overlooking the Palace of Arts standing on the opposite side of Heroe’s Square has a portico supported by eight columns in the front and another eight in the back topped with a tympanum decorated with replicas of the sculptures on the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. Through the main entrance that can be accessed via 24 steps, one enters the marble hall. From here single-flight stairs lead on to the circular galleries around the Renaissance hall from where the exhibition rooms open. By now the museum has become Hungary's most visited public collection, its stairs treaded by hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. Plans - still under dispute - call for it to receive an underground extension. One of the entrances downstairs will be cut into the front stairs by way of which access will be provided to the upper level of the extension down below, which will also be accessible via a nine by nine metre glass cube in Dózsa György út. A neo-Gothic jewel-box on the Danube bank — the stairs of the Parliament Building Designs made for the Parliament Building were reworked by Imre Steindl on more than one occasion. At one point, to enable quay traffic to flow he withdrew the projections to the line of the upper embankment, turned the Danube-side stairways at a transverse angle, and to adjust the shape of the building to the uneven line of the river slightly bent the longitudinal axis. Ultimately, thought, he returned to his original concept. There are two wide stairways of two flights each leading down to the lower embankment too along the axes of the Lower and then Upper House chambers. There is a transverse set of stairs each at the north and south ends leading down from the upper to the lower embankment. It is at high water levels that the view of the stairs comes across fully, especially from river. It was also after several discarded versions that the ornamental entrance on the Kossuth Lajos tér front was born with its wide, free-standing stairs flanked by string walls complete with lions standing guard and short side stairs. These features add extra emphasis to the triple gates and prepare the visitor for the sight of the ceremonial stairs 31
