N. Kósa Judit - Szablyár Péter: Underground Pest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)
A whale skeleton under the military academy
underground railway: first a ditch was dug out, which was then covered with a roof carrying the restored road pavement. Most of the cellars belonging to the Opera House are hardly sunk beneath road-level, which is why some of them afford a view of the street via their windows. It is in these cellars that the workshops and the store-rooms are located. When the building was reconstructed, some of these originally high, vaulted rooms were horizontally divided with newly installed ceilings where it was deemed necessary. That was how the large storage space beneath the auditorium where the musical instruments are kept was formed. Thanks to the ingenious solution, the orchestra pit can be sunk all the way down to the sore-room, which greatly facilitates the transfer of the instruments. A whale skeleton under the military academy The entire complex known as the Ludoviceum in Józsefváros or Joseph Town which will, if all goes well, be the property of the Natural History Museum, was originally built as a military academy in the early 19th century Reform Period. True, the area, which had comprised the gardens of the Barons Orczy estate, was such a remote location that it hardly appeared on city maps. The academy opened its gates to young cadets in 1839, but it had already rendered an important service to the city the previous year when the treasures of the National Museum found refuge here from the dangers of the floods devastating the city. Even an exhibition of the museum's holdings was held in the unadorned barracks. More than a century and a half passed before the former military academy became a museum once again. The decision enabling the National History Museum to move out of the premises it shared with the National Museum and into the huge complex of the former academy was taken in 1994. In October 1996, the museum was able to open its first exhibition in what had once been the manége. In the second half of the same decade several collections were moved into the attic and the ground floor of the main building, and by February 2002 the new, subterranean, rooms had also been made. Surrounded by the main building of the Ludoviceum is an octagonal courtyard. Before reconstruction, it was only the covered areas that hid subter23
