Prakfalvi Endre: Roman Catholic Churches in Unified Budapest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2003)
The St. Stephen Church (Basilica) of Lipótváros (Leopold Town), 1905
left is the warning in the parable of the wise and the foolish virgins reminding us that "the door was shut... Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour" (Matt. 25.10-13). The foolish girls took no oil in their lamps, which is why they missed the wedding (eternal life). On the right is St. Elizabeth, giving alms. Standing outside the last great monument of Hungary’s neo-Gothic architecture is József Damkó’s statue of St. Elizabeth with the inscription Mother of THE POOR PROTECT THE POOREST OF THEM ALL—OUR HUNGARY AD MCMXXXI. Restoration of the exterior of the church-monument was completed in the millennial year of 2000, which marked the 1000th anniversary of the foundation of the Hungarian state. The St. Stephen Church (Basilica) of Lipótváros (Leopold Town), 1905 Szent István tér, District V "Mourned for dead by /your meek iubjecti in Hungary / Cheered by all the iainti / In your new home, that heavenly" (The Vene H'ntory of King Stephen by an anonymous author, 1280-90) Since 1993, the church has functioned as co-cathedral alongside that of the Esztergom archdiocese. In rank it is a royal hall (baiilica), but in style of architecture it is not. The foundation stone was blessed by Primate János Scitovszky on 4 October 1851. Within ten years, construction of the sacristy embracing the apse was concluded, and that structure served as the site of religious worship for the inhabitants of Leopold Town for the next few decades. Originally the church was dedicated to St. Leopold, the national saint of Austria. The dedication was transferred from Leopold to Stephen in 1897, during the millenary celebrations. József Hild (1789-1867), its first architect, designed a nine-segmented sacristy building with a closed layout, and a ringed pattern behind the apse, resting on a colonnade-girdled drum (monopteroi) and topped with a semi-spher- ical dome, all in purely neo-Classical style. A steeple was to stand on each of the four corners of the building. During construction the drum of the dome was raised higher and higher as the surrounding buildings of Leopold Town grew. This compromised the static resistance of the crossing pillars so much that on 28 January 1868 the fifty-metre tall drum caved in. Construction work was suspended until 1876. The architect commissioned to restart operations and pre24
