Buza Péter: Spring and Fountains - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1994)

The Petőfi Fountain

work of János Pásztor stands in Bécsi kapu tér. The Petőfi and the Ottó Herman memorial fountains are of much later dates- -the former, by László Wild, has stood in Petőfi tér only since 1983, while the latter, the work of Róbert Csíkszentmihályi, was placed in the Vérmező park in 1972.

Around the 1930s the city was beginning to find the style of bygone times beautiful. The Well of the Naiads must have been the spiritual archetype after which the Danaids’ Fountain (called that, and correctly, at long last) was patterned. This sculpture by Sidló Ferenc was erected at the end of Sütő utca. On the stone slab, which forms the base of the spouts, stand the two women punished with the horrible fate of being condemned to fetch water forever for having murdered their husbands. The artist followed classical patterns, and his work evokes the atmosphere of old city fountains, as do two more in the inner city, whose ongoing renewal is inspired by similar intentions. Not far away in Vörösmarty tér is Agnes Péter’s

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