Holló Szilvia Andrea: Budapest's Public Works - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)

Natural or artificial?

clay conduits from the springs of Sváb Hill, and water was also driven uphill from the Danube by way of treadmills. These early types of waterworks and water pipes were held in high esteem by the Turkish occupiers, too, who protected them as long as they possibly could, but they were unable to prevent their destruction during the siege of Buda. But then a whole town could not be left without drinking water for long and, opting for the easier solution initially after 1686, the authorities provided water drawn from the Danube until the pipeline from Sváb Hill was repaired on the initiative of army surgeon Eberhardt Everling. In the mid-eighteenth century first Sámuel Mikoviny, an engineer working on the reconstruction of the Buda Palace, and then later after the relocation of the university to the Palace, Farkas Kempelen was commissioned to update the increasingly overworked pumps. The brilliant inventor of the period had been involved in the reconstruction of the water mains system of Pozsony (now Bratislava) and in making the designs of the Schönbrunn fountains as well as constructing a chess-playing mechanism. The work of these eminent experts had a large part to play in securing, as concluded by Ferenc Schams in 1822, "an uninterrupted supply of excellent drinking water for Buda, which bar surpasses in quality the sweetish, nondescript well water obtainable in Pest, and due to the various minerals dissolved in it, it is even healthier to consume, too." A further improve■ Remains of Roman water conduits in Aquincum

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