Zeidler Miklós: Sporting Spaces - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2000)

Stadium and its auxiliary facilities, opened on 17 October 1880. Designed by Frigyes Feszty, the facility was received favourably by the press; it was the pleasantly harmonious arrangement of the parks and buildings that journalists were particularly enthusiastic about.

In the buildings of the grandstands magnificent halls greeted the visitor, and the box of honour, built in Neo-Renaissance style, indulged the course’s royal guests with every luxury the period had to offer. Stefánia út was soon built to connect Sugár út (today And- rássy út) with the racing course via the City Park. Along this elegant alleyway one splendid mansion after the other was built by members of the upper classes. The crowds attracted by the races surpassed all expectations. On the days of major events-for example at the Király challenge each May-the crowds rolling down Stefánia út made it impossible to get from one side of the street to the other. Small wonder that as early as the years preceding the Great War this fine, one-and-a- half mile long course, built for half a million forints, was scorned for being “passé” and “small”. The association set its sights on a huge plot of land on Kerepesi út and commissioned Vilmos Ruppert to prepare the blueprints of a new course. (Doing so was all the more necessary as the municipality of Budapest gave the association short notice to quit the Csömöri út land in 1910). Ruppert’s grandiose plans were prevented from being realised by the war and the collapse of the economy that followed. The “old” racing course quietly “passed away” in the meantime; during the reign of the Hungarian Republic of Soviets, this symbol of genteel idleness was eliminated; with the course itself being ploughed over the premises of the facility were turned into common farmland for a while. Those unable to kick the habit attended races held at Alag and Káposztásmegyer.

By the end of the twenties construction work on the new gallop course designed by Andor Wellisch had begun. The crowds were let onto the terraces for the first time on 10 May 1925. A fine balance was struck between the first-class grandstand, built in a pseudo- Italian, Neo-Renaissance style, and the simpler but somewhat larger second-class terraces. The building of the first-class grandstand includes a row of boxes

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