N. Kósa Judit - Szablyár Péter: Underground Buda - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)
A city of vineyards and wine - from Budafok to Nagytétény
Hungary altogether) are published in English and thus shared with the international community of researchers. There are plans to display the "retired’' instruments, which are now of museological interest, in an exhibition covering the history of seismological research. With its population of two million, Budapest produces a background "noise" of tremors interfering with high-precision measurement, but with this effect taken into account, data issued by the Observatory can still provide various professions with reliable information. Plaques commemorating the work of László Egyed and Ede Bisztricsány pay tribute to two leading figures of seismological research in Hungary. A city of vineyards and wine — from Budafok to Nagytétény Budafok—Tétény, District XXII of Budapest, lies on the right bank of the Danube, south of the Buda Hills on a dolomite plateau covered in part with loess, and on the sides of the plateau sloping towards the Danube. Below this area stretches a system of caves and potholes of no kilometres in combined length. Some of these cavities are of natural origin (as is the Greater or Turkish Cave), but the fact that Sarmatian rock from the Miocene epoch is particularly easy to carve and is a fine building material resulted in the formation of numerous artificial pits, too. The method of mining applied here was the same as that used in Kőbánya, although several subcrust layers were here opened by first sinking a courtyard from where caves were carved horizontally, which were then used as the various rooms of cave dwellings. The settlement that came into being on the slopes in the 17th century, slopes which were renowned for their viniculture as early as the Turkish period, was at first called Promontorium and has borne the name Budafok since 1886. In his 1851 work Magyaror&zás geographiai dzótára (A Geographical Dictionary of Hungary) Elek Fényes makes mention of the underground world of the area, reporting that "many a dwelling place, stable and barn is in hollows carved into the hillside.” He does not overlook the caves of Tétény either, noting that "there is a famous cave carved into rock here, in which there is room for 360,000 gallons of wine.” Crumbling underground pits were left behind where levels of clay (bentonite) varying in thickness were removed by miners from the soft, in places 51
