Antall József szerk.: Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 5. (Budapest, 1972)

Semmelweis's Birthplace - The Home of the Museum

Street 1-3, was also built in this way at the end of the 18th century. Originally it was built in Neo-Classic Late-Baroque style. The great fire of 1810 in Tabán destroyed the house but it was soon rebuilt and given its present 'zopf' facade. (Fig.87.). The traces of the great fire are still to be seen in some parts of its walls

: some smoky parts have been revealed at the latest reconstruction. Research has not identified the persons of the architects, neither that of the Baroque nor of the 'zopf' building. Three rizalits - one in the middle and two on both sides - give plasticity to the one-storey building with 2+3+3+3+2 windows

. They are broken up by pilasters ending in double consols which connect the ground floor and the second floor. Between the pilasters there is a protuberant festoon decoration in the main cornice, echoed by festoons underneath the windows. The simple side view looking onto the Sándor-lépcső (Sándor stairs) is broken up by windows to give the wall a more animated effect. On the other side, looking onto the Szarvas House a partition wall is waiting another attaching building. Considering the surroundings, the magnificent view up to the Royal Castle, the future building needs proper and careful design. A hasty, ill-considered design or building would cause irreparable damage. THE BIRTHPLACE The birthplace of Ignác Semmelweis was never owned by the Semmelweis family as it is stated in several Semmelweis monographs. This is why the question arose whether the building considered as the birthplace of Semmelweis could be connected to the Semmelweis family at all and whether this familiar and generally known belief is justified or not. On the basis of the Grundbuch Conscription preserved in the Municipal Archives it can be maintained that between 1814 and 1844 the house was owned by János Meinđl

, a well-to-do tradesman and respected citizen and his family. Between 1844 and 1852 it was entered under the name of Lőrinc Jankovits, afterwards it was owned by Leo Schallinger and his successors. In 1906 when the Semmelweis memorial plaque was placed on the house it was owned by Márton Wolf, greengrocer. The registers of Tabán in the material of the "Buda Archives" preserved in the Municipal Archives reveal us the owners and tenants of the Meinđ House, today's Apród Street 1-3 between 1805 and 1830

. József Semmelweis, the father of Ignác Semmelweis lived here with his companion Simon Gerhard in 1809 before the great fire as an unmarried young man. He stayed here even after his marriage in 1810 which coincided with the year of the great Tabán fire. In the conscriptions of 1815 the Semmelweis family is entered with the three elder sons (József, Károly, Fülöp) and the servants. In 1817 the registers