Csernus Lukács - Triff Zsigmond: The Cemeteries of Budapest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1999)

Section for Italian soldiers killed in World War I

ed to be the best suited for the purposes of a new cemetery. It could also be easily expanded if necessary. Győző Czigler, a professor at the University of Technology, was commissioned to design the landscape and prepare plans for the administrative and other buildings.

The Public Cemetery was opened on 1 May 1886. However, the first burials took place only in August. The offices of the management and the reception were housed in the wings of the buildings erected in 1903 at the main entrance. Between these is a 26-metre campanile, whose main fagade is decorated by “God the Father”, a statue made by Géza Maróti. A bronze statue of “Genius” holding a frond, the work of Ferenc Márton, stood above the cornice of the campanile before it had to be removed due to its deteriorated condition. A glass mosaic by Miksa Róth on the building is on each side, one depicting “The Sepulture of Christ”, the other “The Resurrection”. To the left and to the right of the main entrance, along the fence, there is a row of richly ornamented vaults.

It was only after the 1900s that the number of burials in the cemetery increased significantly. With military cemeteries established earlier elsewhere having filled up, two sections were opened in the New Public Cemetery for the military in 1903. During World War 1, there were buried here eighteen to twenty thousand soldiers who had either died in action or lost their lives as prisoners of war. The war casualties of Hungary’s allies killed at the time were also laid to rest in this cemetery. Both the Hungarian and the foreign soldiers who lost their lives in World War II were also buried in this finely arranged and nicely kept military

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