Szatmári Gizella: Walks in the Castle District - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2001)

A SCULPTURE FROM THE RICH GOTHIC FIND DISCOVERED

by László Zolnay

the north wing of the Hungarian National Gallery are today. Inside the palace the edifice called the Stumped Tower was left unfinished due to the death of the king. Cised as a gunpowder storehouse by the Turks, it exploded in 1578. Its foundations were uncovered by excavations in the 1960s but were destroyed when the building of the Museum of Contemporary Art was extended. However, the path leading to the northern faqade, the Dry Moat also dating from the time of Sigismund, is still in evidence, as are the columns of the stone bridge across it. The large Castle Market stretched on the area outside the museum; at the northern end of this, the foundations of St. Sigismund Chapel, its pillars and chancel can be traced. Remnants of medieval houses, castle walls and bastions stand along the side of the area overlooking Krisztinaváros. It was here, roughly at the time that excavations were being carried out in the area outside the western side of the museum, that in 1974 archaeologist László Zolnay discovered the Gothic statues dating from King Sigismund’s period. (The statues are now on permanent display in the Budapest History Museum.) László Hunyadi was beheaded on the Castle Market, a venue of medieval tournaments, and it was also here that Matthias vanquished Holubar, the haughty knight from Bohemia.

The only surviving evidence of Matthias’s palace comprises carved red marble ornaments, ceramics, stove tiles and pieces of majolica floor-covering. The edifice

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