Szablyár Péter: Step by step - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)

The Queen of all Budapest stairs. the Fishermen' Bastion

After the expulsion of the Turks from Hungary and the resulting liberation of Buda Castle, the wall section was modernised by the Austrians, who gave serious attention to the issue of defensibility when picking the ideal spot for setting up artillery pieces. In 1874 the Castle was decommissioned as a fortified stronghold and from then on the neighbourhood became the focal point of a nation's preparations for the millenary celebrations of its emergence as an independent country.

Following the reconstruction of Matthias Church by Frigyes Schulek and the demolition of the neighbouring monastery in the 1880s, the architect set about to prepare comprehensive development plans for the environs of the church. These plans rested on the threefold principles of protecting the Castle Hill's slopes here, constructing necessary pedestrian pathways, and integrating all these into a composite unit aesthetically harmonising with the appearance of the church building itself.

To further the achievement of the second objective, Schulek designed a stairway admitting a significant amount of pedestrian traffic to connect Főherceg Albrecht (today's Hunyadi János) street with the central square of the Castle District. The axis of this runs parallel to the main axis of Matthias Church, but moved by about ten metres to the north, thus dividing the emphatic architectural masses of the Fishermen’s Bastion in two. The stairway was started with two flights forking out to the north and south and then each returning toward the main axis and rising by 49 steps to the

■ Fi&hermen'i Baition under cowUruction. 12 July 1900

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