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

Splendid steps in the Metropolitan Ervin Szabó Library

■ Spiral itairá at the tum oh an era

former Wenckheim Palace as its point zero. Completed in 1889 on a trapezoidal plot on the border of the magnate’s quarter, the neo-Baroque palace of Count Frigyes Wenckheim was designed by Artúr Meining. Housed in the palace since 1931 is Budapest's Metropolitan Library. The very popular holdings — including the Budapest collection among its special holdings - had outgrown their old premises by the turn of the millennium, and its renovation-cum-extension had become urgent. Patrons could hardly wait for the reopening of the old-new library that was to emerge in the wake of the reconstruction and extension works involving the annexing of buildings and wings that had not belonged to the library before. Péter Hegedűs, the Ybl Prize winning architect and his associates, László Felcsuti, Csaba Vargacz, and his interior designers Mihály Hefkó and Csaba Jakab created something that overawed everybody. The team of designers won several awards, including the Europa Nostra Diploma for the library complex in 2002 and the prize for the Interior Designer of the Year awarded to Csaba Jakab.

Impressing the visitor with their richly ornamented wooden railings are the two

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