Szatmári Gizella: Signs of Remembrance - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2005)

■ Józsefi Fischer. Carousel at the wedding of Palatine Joseph

not to move out of here before its new headquarters were completed in 1926.)

The hallowed walls saw many a high-born visitor. It was here that Alexander Leopold was ceremonially installed into the Lord Lieutenancy of Pest County in 1791. Here, in the banqueting hall of the parliament building were Palatine Joseph and his young bride, Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna, saluted by the learned writer-philosopher, Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Pest and Headmaster of the Castle District Lyceum, György Alajos Szerdahelyi S. J. With "the ice on the Danube broken up and the river flowing with torrential violence, thousands of people from Pest |who had come to Buda to salute the Palatine and his bride] were obliged to spend the night in Buda,” quotes József Zoltán in the Hírmondó (Messenger). The Palatine responded by having the halls of Parliament opened for the purposes of a "free banquet” for those trapped on the wrong side of the river. The fancy-dress ball held a few days later was already part of the nuptials.

Foreshortened by the perspective of history measured in centuries, the few decades that the nuns spent here may appear to be a brief and uneventful period. And yet, the contemplative lifestyle of the Poor Clares bore its fruit. Surviving in manuscript form is Abbess Franciska Csáky’s prayer-book (kept in

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