N. Kósa Judit - Szablyár Péter: Underground Buda - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)
On all fours beneath Palota út - the draining of the Ybl Buttress
On all fours beneath Palota út - the draining of the Ybl Buttress Visitors taking the lift to their destination in the Széchényi Library or to one of the museums in the palace complex can have no idea that the cast-iron slab under their feet at the bottom of the buttress decorated with a fine carved escutcheon and covered with bricks hides a 14-metre deep shaft. This is the access hole to the drainage system of the Ybl Buttress. When the monumental wall was raised in the second half of the 19th century, the builders took into consideration the experience gained during the construction and the operation of the Tunnel nearby. The water seeping from the Buda marl was collected in two pits arranged at right angles to each other from where it was conducted to the Devil's Ditch. Descending below the covering slab, one gets into a smaller hole. Water collected here escapes from this cavity via a dark, narrow opening to the west. To the north leads an approximately sixty-metre long and 1.2-metre high, elliptical conduit covered with brick. Joining this conduit from above are two well-like shafts. The lukewarm water gathering in the rock is tapped by these shafts together with the conduit cut into the bored marl itself. Running to the east from our point of departure there is another channel with two shafts; the job of these is to dehydrate the rock in front of the north facade of the palace. The two channels are connected to each other by a third one a few metres from the point at which they fork out in different directions. The hydrological qualities of the drainage system were researched by hydrologist Dr. Ferenc Horusitzky and chemical engineer Tihamér Gedeon in the 1930s. The two noted experts had all the work done by their great predecessors-József Szabó, Károly Papp, Tamás Szontágh and Dr. Ferenc Scha- farzik - to rely on. The drainage system was cleansed and checked for abandoned ammunition in the early 1980s, after the reconstruction of the Ybl Buttress. The system has been able to fulfil its functions in its original form since the cones of rubble were removed from below its shafts. It is to be regretted that the Török Gardens above the system (in the area between the Ybl Buttress and the medieval walls — the western wall-enclosure) have yet to be laid out, which increases the confusion in front of the northern front of the library 57 years after the siege of Buda Castle. 36
