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

Some special Towers

A small tower with a great past: the Mace Tower

Döbrentei tér, District I

The medieval Castle of Buda was among the richest and most magnificent building complexes in its time. Of its former towers, only one was reconstructed when the palace was rebuilt - the Mace Tower.

Approaching the Castle Hill from the south, one will catch sight of the Mace Tower rising by the Ferdinand Gate, to the west of the south Round Bastion. An integral part of the curtains and bastions of the Castle, this tower has repeatedly been destroyed and then brought back to life in its long and eventful history. In medieval representations of the Castle Hill, the building appears as a very slim angle-tower with a short and narrow stem and conic roof, whose spot is only marked by a heap of debris in pictures made after Buda’s liberation from its Turkish occupation. Pictures made in the Reform Era of the 1830s show a structure of a broad based conic stem appearing to be as tall as the bastion is today. (The conic shape provided for a wall structure more resistant to cannon fire.)

■ The Mace Tower

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