Matits Ferenc: Protestant Churches - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2003)

The barrel-vaulted crypt is accessible by way of the sacristy; it is here that the mortal remains of numerous potentates of the Pest-Buda citizenry were laid to rest between 1823 and 1968. Among them are the founder of the church Bishop Gábor Báthory and András Fáy, a leader of literary and social movements in Hungary's Age of Reform. Fáy, that all-round servant of the fatherland, is not only remembered as the founder of the First Domestic Savings Bank, but also as the public figure who initiated the establishment of a joint Academy of Protestant Theology. Here lies the body of Countess Manó Zichy née Charlotte (Sarolta) Strachan, who was admitted to the Calvinist congregation as a member of the Church of England. Her white-marble sepulchre (1854) is the work of the Paris sculptor Raymond Gayrard (1777-1858), whose work was placed, despite Protestant reservations about sculptures in general, in a neo-Gothic structure made by Frigyes Feszi (1820-84) on the left-side wall of the church.

■ The main facade of} the church