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

Parish Church of the Queen of the Rosary, 1915

impression made by the building, which enhances the overall appearance of the street.

The external appearance of the neo-Gothic superstructure shaped like a bevelled brick would suggests a nave-and-aisles pattern with a transept. However, entering the building beneath the tower, one is greeted by a brilliantly executed interior suggesting a centralised arrangement. The undivided central space, octagonal in shape and a good 22 metres in diameter, was covered with a stellar vault. The shape of the reinforced concrete roofing, which was a unique construction at the time, traced out the eight-pointed star of the order. The octagon had expressed wholeness ever since classical antiquity, and in the sphere of ideas surrounding the resurrection of Jesus, the number eight is considered as the very last day of creation, bringing Genesis to its fulfilment.

Added to the octagon are two wide chambers, as a transept-substitute of sorts. To the north there opens a polygonal (septangular) main chancel, and across from this there is a joined pair of pillars belonging to the organ loft, marking the end of the central space. The main apse is flanked by the oratory and the sacristy, which establish a link to the convent. (An extension to the latter was designed by László Lauber and István Nyiri in 1936.) The main altar, carved in Carrara marble with a statue of the Queen of the Rosary, was designed by István Möller, while the statue of St. Margaret in the right side of the "transept" and the altar of St. Dominic on the left are the work of Gyula Petrovácz.

Cut through by triple-mullioned windows, the vaulted walls behind the side altars are decorated with Béla Kontuly's large murals showing the apotheosis of the two saints (1942-43). Composed in the manner of a montage, the images comprise scenes from the lives of the saints. In the apex of the composition featuring Dominic there is the depiction of an episode from a late legend of St. Dominic, in which the founder of the order of preachers (Ordo Praedlca- torum) is initiated into the mystery of the rosary by the Virgin Mary. (In 1997 a serious fire ravaged the building and badly damaged these works, too; their restoration is still to be undertaken.) The stained-glass windows (by Miksa Róth) representing the seven sacraments and episodes from the Old and the New Testaments are also worthy of note.

After an enforced interval of forty years, from 1989, the church once again belongs to the Dominicans.

The large, carved-wood Golgotha cross of the church (1930) was set up in Heroes' Square during a mass celebrated on the occasion of the first visit of Pope John Paul 1 to Hungary in 1991.

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