Prakfalvi Endre: Roman Catholic Churches in Unified Budapest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2003)
The Parish Church of St. Francis of Assisi, 1879
The church in Bakáts tér is a three-aisled basilica with a Latin-cross layout and built in Lombardian style, where the nave and the two apses have a flush base line. And yet, the side spaces opening from the sanctuary bay are taken up by the sacristy and the baptistery. Closed by three sides of an octagon at the chancel, which is turned to the east (literally oriented, i.e. pointing to the rising sun, associated with Christ, who is "the light of the world", John 8.12), the nave is covered with a segmented, quarter-spherical vault. The three-aisled Romanesque crypt, which is segmented by pillars topped with cubic capitals, lies on a T-shaped groundplan beneath the slightly protruding transept and is accessible from the outside. Restored a few years ago, this part of the building was named after St. Adalbert, a Bishop of Prague and "apostle of Hungary”, and the patron saint of the archdiocese. Adalbert christened Stephen I, founding king of Hungary, and died a martyr's death in 997 as a missionary in Prussia. Medieval, and within that Romanesque, forms are invoked by the four pairs of sturdy, cylindrical columns with floral-foliage capitals in the nave's buttress ■ The portico 10
