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

steeple palace with its three courtyards enclosed by a solid system of curtain walls was built in the Buda Castle. Its construction begun under Louis the Great, the Truncated Tower remained an "unfinished project”. The ground plan of the five- or six-storey high edifice can now be made out in the light stone covering of the Lion Courtyard.

King Matthias (1458—90) concentrated on the beautification of the buildings raised by Sigismund, refurbishing them in Renaissance style. The oldest view of his palace survives on a woodcut made in the workshop of Michel Wohlgemut and published, between 1490 and 1493, in the chronicles of the Nuremberg master Hartmann Schedel. In it, the Fresh Palace can be spotted and so can St. Stephen’s Tower with its numerous pinnacles. In Erhard Schön's 1541 woodcut the many- towered castle of Buda is shown from a westerly direction. László Gerevich used the findings of his own comprehensive post-World War 11 excavations as well as earlier descriptions and woodcuts to reconstruct the outlines of the splendid palace complex. The sight greeting 15th century visitors must indeed have been magnificent.

The Muslim architecture of Hungary's century-long Turkish occupation changed the twin cityscape beyond recognition. An engraving made by Georg Hoefnagel (1542-1600) for a six-volume series introducing the major cities of the world and

■ Buda írom the east. Detail from Hartmann Schedel's chronicle

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