Benkő Andrea: A Guide to Petőfi Literary Museum (Budapest, 2009)
The Károlyi Palace
THE KAROLYI PALACE glass doors upstairs rhymes with those on the ground floor, and the motive of the three arcades is repeated on the opposite side of the entrance hall. The area above the resting-place in the entrance hall is closed by the elaborate ironwork of the enormous hipped glass roof. Adorning the pilaster-divided architectural sections of the walls in the Aula (163 m2) situated before the Library is the Károlyi family's portrait gallery. Built in 1838, the Library, with its neo-classical, mahogany furniture decorated with delicate architectural elements, has remained intact. In addition to the gallery and the bookcases, specially designed furniture for the reading room completes the picture. Owing to the restoration that affected the whole building and was completed in December 2000, five of the beautiful series of halls in the main wing facing Károlyi Mihály Street have retained their original form. These are the Ceremonial Hall, the Balcony Hall, the Scarlet Hall, the Lotz Hall and the Hall of Mirrors. The reconstruction of the historical interiors and the renovation of the textile and paper hangings, the gilding, the imitation marble and the stuccowork were completed with the reconstruction of the fireplaces and chandeliers. The most impressive is the Ceremonial Hall (120m2) with its five windows and marble revetment, and its three enormous mirrors over the hand-carved marble fireplace. Each of the window apertures and the two doors and three mirrors opposite are flanked by two pairs of richly gilded pilasters with Corinthian capitals, while at either side of the entrances in the shorter : walls, pilasters stretch upwards to the cornice under the opulently decorated stuccoed ceiling. Next to the : Ceremonial Hall the white walls of the Balcony Hall i (78m2), with its three windows and opening onto the u iron-work balcony of the main front, are covered with imitation marble. The reception room, which is now called the Lotz Hall (96m2), was named after the mural : on the ceiling. Károly Lotz's (1833-1904) work depicting the Muses was moved here in 1942 from the Wodi- aner Palace, which was to be demolished (3, Liszt Ferenc Square), to the institution which at the time functioned as the Budapest Picture Gallery. The ceiling of the Scarlet Hall (94m2) is original, while the drapery covering the walls was designed and reproduced on the basis of material samples uncovered during reconstruction. The Music Hall or Hall of Mirrors has magnificent tobacco and gold-coloured wood panelling (boiserie) on its walls, with embedded mirrors that were such a feature of the interiors of the 19 th century. The adjacent room, today the Bártfay Salon, honours Count György Károlyi's secretary, László Bártfay (1797-1858). The room was formerly part of the countess's apartments. Stepping out into the corridor, you find yourself in a room that once functioned as a flower hall, later a picture gallery - its walls, together with the walls of the chapel, are covered with patterned green damask. In the orders of arches for the doors and windows and on the ceiling of the Chapel the magnificent carved wood panelling has fortunately survived in its original form. Once serving as the Károlyi archives, the two rooms on the ground floor have also had their original 18th-century neoclassical furniture returned to them.
