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

Vertical immobility - the maid's backstairs

■ enamelled Art Nouveau óign deóignafing the iervanW itain

by means of these that maids must carry up water, firewood or any other loads; moving about any such freight is forbidden in the main staircase, except for larger pieces of furniture whose dimensions do not allow for transportation by way of the narrow stairs; these can be carried upstairs with the special permission of the janitor and at appropriate times."

These architectural mementos of the lives lived by the models of Anna Édes, the servant-heroine of Dezső Kosztolányi's eponymous novel, have by now lost their function in Budapest. Backstairs are now all but impassable, and thus reduced to function as junk disposal areas — in fact, their elimination is being considered in many places. There might be yet another memento of the era: the zigzag roundabout passageway called "Backstairs" in the Mátyás Hill Cave is also reminiscent of those curious architectural features of a bygone age.

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