Földes Mária: Ornamentation - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1993)
design. (That impression, however, might be due to the half-light within.) Beneath the rose window, a thick wrought iron gate railing blocks off entry at night in the manner of the portcullis of a Moorish harem. As we enter the arcade stepping on the floor’s coloured paving, we are beset by the atmosphere of an oriental bazaar. All we can see at first is the glittering of the shop windows, and it is only when our eyes gradually adjust themselves to the thin light that we notice the rich ornamentation and the other sights inside. Above the wooden panelling over the windows and the doors of the shops, the familiar tulip motif flashes on the visitor. The octagonal hall and the passageway beyond the entrances are covered by a fantastic glass dome. The process of manufacturing the special crystal glass prisms took the once famous Haas & Somogyi firm two years to complete. In earlier days the passage was lit by thousands of light bulbs hidden in the prisms. The structural elements of the rose windows, the fan vaulting of the almost flat octagonal dome, the capitals adorned with bees, and the slender columns are made of cast iron. Designer Henrik Schmahl and builder Pál Lipták used the newly available materials and technologies both daringly and cleverly. Through the maze of columns, roofed staircases, and loggias it is worth climbing upstairs to the uppermost floor. Walking along the meandering corridors there we will acquire a rare experience. From here we can examine the structure of the glass domes covering the passage and the central cashiers’ hall, which is only accessible from the street. Glancing upwards we see a forest of variously shaped chimneys and pinnacles. And it is then that we can really admire the several icing-like, ceramic, coloured adornments of the roofing, the strong green and brick-red majolica covering. The open galleries were designed to look like the arcaded and cross-vaulted corridors in a Renaissance castle. They are uniformly covered with green-shaded and white tiles, lined in more pronounced green at the edges, with rounded off shapes smooth to the touch. The coloured stained glass windows of the two-flight stairs, and the warm-tinted, yellow-green tile covering all radiate a friendly atmosphere. On the landings, pretty 13
