Porhászka László: The Danube Promenade - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1998)

cast in bronze and inaugurated in 1879. This Historicist monument of Hungary’s famous minister of culture stood on a pediment designed by Miklós Ybl. Around the substructure in a semi-circle there was a low, cast-iron fence, which brought well-deserved fame to its creator Miklós Oetl, though regrettably this feature is now longer in place. Carved on the back of the base the inscription Raised by the nation in 1879 proclaimed the fact that the monument was financed from the takings of a fund raising campaign. A small, black marble plaque and a bronze wreath fixed to the pediment were placed here in 1913 by Hungary’s teachers as an homage to the statesman who had done so much for the country’s culture and education. The gilded lettering of the inscription declares:

This memorial / is dedicated by the teachers / and pupils of Hungary’s secondary schools to / THE MEMORY OF EÖTVÖS / on 26 October 1913, / on the occasion of the nation-wide celebrations / marking the centenary of his birth.

The choice of the southernmost end of the promenade, in 1882, as the site for a statue of Sándor Petőfi is evidence of the care with which the cityscape was planned. Miklós Izsó, the artist originally commissioned to make the statue, died before the completion of the large casting mould, which is why the committee contracted Adolf Huszár to prepare the statue with the proviso that he was to use Izsó’s finished scale model as a starting point. Indeed, Huszár was faithful to his late master’s artistic intentions, even though his finished bronze statue, especially in comparison with the romantic dynamism of Izsó’s work, appears to be frozen in an unnaturally ceremonial gesture. The pediment was, once again, designed by Miklós Ybl and was made of the same Mauthausen granite as that of the Eötvös monument. Inscribed into the front side is simply the name Petőfi. The inscription on the back reads: Built with funds donated by the whole nation, 1882. By far the greatest part of the funds was raised from concerts given by the internationally-famous violinist Ede Reményi.

Squares around each of the two monuments were also created. The statues in the middle of these squares marking the ends of the promenade have weathered both the destruction of the old and the construction of new hotels behind them. Renovated and floodlit at night, they stand to this day in their original places.

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