Gál Éva: Margaret Island - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2000)

Palatine Joseph (oil, Ágost Canzi)

várad, then to Nagyszombat and eventually to Pozsony), retained their claim to Margaret Island. After one and a half centuries of Ottoman rule, it was their successors in title, the Pozsony Clarissa Sisters—subsequently named Buda Clarissas, after their removal from Pozsony—who substantiated the claim. However, the medieval buildings were not to be restored to their original condition in the century following the expulsion of the Turks (1686) and neither was monastic life renewed here (the Clarissas settled down in the Castle District of Buda) and the island relapsed into its earlier natural state used, if in fact used at all, only as a hay field.

The next development occurred in 1790, when Alexander Leopold, Hungary’s newly elected palatine was given the island as a summer retreat, and when, in 1799, his successor Palatine Joseph acquired proprietorial rights via an exchange of estates. Joseph had the shrubbery turned into parkland, and did in fact use the island for recreational purposes for several decades. From then

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