N. Kósa Judit - Szablyár Péter: Underground Buda - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)

A magic forest of pillars inside Gellért Hill

■ The re&ervoir under construction

larly opened to visitors, were built to supplement the existing system of reservoirs on Gellért Hill. The first two had been built on the other side of the hill, at Kelenhegyi út. The oldest one was built in 1904 by the municipality, surprisingly in order to improve the water supply of the Pest districts. With its water storage capacity of 17,500 cubic metres, the pool was designed to eliminate fluctuations in water pressure in the mains system by providing an even flow of reserve water. Water from the Kelenhegy plant was conducted to the Inner City and the Kelenföld regions. By 1911 it had become obvious that the Krisztinaváros pool, which belonged to the Buda plant and was thus provided with water from the Újlak wells, also had to be relieved. In 1925, a so-called Cave Engine Unit was built at the foot of Gellért Hill to help provide the area around the Krisztinaváros reservoir by forwarding as much as 18,000 cubic metres of water a day, which it received via the Francis Joseph (today Szabadság) Bridge.

During the war the Gellért Hill reservoir sustained serious damage, which had not been fully repaired before 1949. Meanwhile, the amount of water demanded by the city kept growing, which is why the second, 30,000-cubic- metre reservoir at Kelenhegyi út also had to be put on stream. Despite the fact that in 1968 there were already 33 storage pools at the service of the city’s population, Budapest ran short of water throughout the 1970s. The only

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