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

Stairs that have gone missing

the west in the line of Váralja (today’s Logodi) utca, in the foreground of the Buzogány-torony (Mace Tower) that was "built" according to principles of monument-reconstruction that are controversial to this day.

The fine exterior and interior stairs of the Buda Castle Palace designed by Alajos Hauszmann and Miklós Ybl all fell victim to the "modernization" undertaken in the sixties and seventies of the last century. The most grotesque aspect of the process was when the extension of monument protection to the palace in 1949 was followed by irreversible acts of truncation and reconstruction jobs resulting in indiscriminate destruction carried out on the palace complex. A curious exception is the case of the two-flight set of stairs leading from the Baroque or Habsburg Gate to the terraces outside the Palace, above which Gyula Donáth’s Statue of the Turul Bird can be seen towering. For some reason this assemblage was overlooked, which made the stylistic fiaux pas that much more conspicuous. The ornamental stairs of the former Christina Town wing all disappeared in the course of the reconstruction carried out to clear space for the installation here of the National Széchényi Library. Alajos Stróbl's impressive wall-paintings were wiped out together with the main staircase, and his statue of Justice was destroyed on the spot because of the diffi■ Habsburg Stain in their hull splendour

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