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

Natural or artificial?

preparing the required set of water filters. The new waterworks of Buda began to supply each member of Buda's forty-thousand strong population with about 12 gallons of water from January of 1856. Employing a natural method of purifying the waters of the Danube involved driving the water through layers of gravel and sand; the water thus cleansed was conveyed via an approximately six-kilometre pipeline, dividing the quantity obtained among eight communal wells and 88 public buildings and private residences. About a third of the water thus conveyed was lost to leakage caused by faulty wadding, with the rest often rendered undrinkable by insufficient filtering. To supplement the quantities lost in the process, the waterworks of the Rudas Baths had to be connected to the system. English experts recommended the use of cisterns in the hillsides but the suggestion was taken off the agenda due to the impending unification of the three cities of the future Budapest.

In mediaeval times, the water supply of Pest was also as yet unproblematic: under King Matthias's reign, the water of the Illés Well in today's Ludovika tér was conveyed to the town, with any surplus amounts being used for irrigation. Two craftsmen from Karlóca (today's Sremski Karlovci) wanted to reintroduce this practice in 1790, but their idea met with little enthusiasm as every household drew whatever water it needed from its own well and, as physician Ignác Schlesinger stated in his topo■ Water peddlen on the Danube bank (drawing by Károly Sterio)

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