Prakfalvi Endre: Roman Catholic Churches in Unified Budapest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2003)

The St. Stephen Church (Basilica) of Lipótváros (Leopold Town), 1905

■ View of the main fapade from the weit

pare new designs was Miklós Ybl. At the time of his death in 1891, the entire facades, including sculptural decoration, had been completed, together with the structural vaulting and external shell of the dual dome. Although the church rests upon an elevated terrace, which includes the crypt, the absence of an appropriate perspective prevents the mass from creating the desired impression.

Standing at a height of 95 metres, the cross on the first domed church of the city received benediction on 19 October 1889. Administered by Medárd Kohl, auxiliary to Prince Primate Kolos Vaszary, the 1905 consecration ceremony took three days to accomplish. The first mass in the church was celebrated on 19 November 1905, the feast of St. Elizabeth of the House of Árpád.

Five-and-a-half decades after construction had commenced, Emperor and Apostolic King Francis Joseph I put the keystone in place on 8 December 1906.

Accessible via the porch of this historicist, and within that predominantly neo-Renaissance, centralised building, is the nine-segmented space raised upon a Greek-cross groundplan framed by a square. With its spatial arrangement, the church is reminiscent of St. Peter’s in Rome, while the "pointed" silhouette of the central cupola recalls the dome of the Church of the Invalides in Paris.

At the corners of the Greek cross there are chapels covered with smaller domes. The western front on the entrance side is flanked by a couple of tall and

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