Szablyár Péter: Step by step - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)
Steps underground
sive stone floor facings, and a somewhat oversize steel framework, has turned out to serve excellently well as an advertising pillar by the busy bus terminus. Behind the National Theatre on the Danube bank side is a strange, spiral edifice in the shape of a truncated cone; it is on the northern side of this edifice that a narrow set of stairs ascends, in ancient Mesopotamia, ziggurat was the name of a stepped temple with a sanctuary on the uppermost level, where the upper floors were used for the purposes of astrological observation. Envisaged by landscape architect Péter Török, this "Babel Tower of the Arts” resembling the solar pyramids of the Mayan people features a steep, narrow, strickly ornamental stairway on its side toward Gellért Hill leading up to the upper plateau. Inside the tower are seven exhibition rooms, an allusion to Bluebeard's Castle. Strollers in the City Park have to negotiate the obstacle of a strange edifice on a grassy area opposite the Museum of Fine Arts in the City Park. The small footbridge, which has a span of a 10.6 metres and a two-metre wide walking surface, can be ascended by way of a one-flight stairway at one and a two-flight one at the other. But what can be the function of this construction? A long time ago, it crossed the surface track of the Millenary Underground, and when the railway line was extended to Mexikói út and no longer ascended to the surface at the City Park stop, the structure, though deprived of its function, was spared all the same. Steps underground Buildings were raised above cellars from as early on as the beginning of the Middle Ages, partly for defensive purposes and partly for the storage of wine or foodstuffs, but people also liked to deposit their treasures in underground chambers. With urbanisation in the 19th and 20th centuries, cellars came to be utilised for the storage of heating fuel, workshops or storerooms, it is not these that will be introduced here to the reader, but three unique structures built to access natural cavities modified for human use that will be described instead. Steps carved by miners of yore The system of chambers belonging to the Báthori Cave opening in the side of Hárs Hill Major has been known since the Neolithic Age. Mineral exudations in the vicinity of its entrance were noted as early as the Middle Ages. Mining was a state monopoly at that time already, so the Treasury also took notice of the discovery soon, it has not been determined exactly when mining activities were 82
