Szablyár Péter: Sky-high - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2007)

Churches; Towers; Domes

Schulek accepted Schmidt’s recommendations and decided on a Béla IV style for the church, except for the tower. He maintained that the purpose of the reconstruction "was to preserve the spirit of the building, which is thus to be restored to its old form”. As completed, his work, whose revaluation is now underway even as preparations are made for another reconstruction job, stands in the centre of the World Heritage Site of the Castle District as a representative of Hungary's neo-Gothic architecture at its best.

The church is 60 metres long and 24.15 metres wide, the nave measuring 11.4 and each of the two aisles 6.6 metres across. The height of the nave is 16.8, and that of the aisles is 15.7 metres. Matthias Church stands eighty metres high, while the frustum of the tower named for Béla II ends at a height of 36 metres.

The Matthias Tower is the finest and most characteristic feature of the building. The two square-based storeys below repeat, with slight changes, the North Tower, echoing the 13th century fagade. The upper three storeys are octagonal at their base, like Matthias' original tower pulled down by Schulek. It is in the window of the fourth section that a coat of arms from Matthias's period and the date 1470 were placed. The section with the tracery portico and gargoyles above the fifth storey contains the south stair-turret.

The Matthias Tower is also a monument of the capital's fire-fighting history. During its reconstruction a well-equipped fire-post was arranged in it, modelled on St. Stephen's Church in Vienna. It was to this that the fire-brigade from the City Hall was moved in October of 1897. In the 20th century, the Capital City Fire Department relinquished its claim on this "medieval’’ observation post, so the tower guard was disbanded on 31 May 1931.

During the siege of Budapest, the church was severely damaged. Its reconstruction was only completed in 1970, and yet the building had become so dilapidated by the turn of the millennium that another wholesale reconstruction had become inevitable. Work started earlier this year. It is to be hoped that after its thorough renewal, the tower will offer another panoramic view of Budapest.

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