Matits Ferenc: Protestant Churches - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2003)

■ The main fapade of the church and the parsonage

After a series of unsuccessful attempts, the Calvinists were eventually allowed in the early 1780s to raise a house of worship, without a tower, on the spot where the old gathering place stood.

Four years after Joseph II issued his decree granting freedom of worship to non-Catholic denominations on 18 May 1785, the Óbuda Calvinists laid down the foundation stone of their church. Besides donations made by local believers, contributions also arrived from other parts of the country. Money was sent, among others, by the Calvinists of Debrecen, Kecskemét and Rimaszombat. During the preparatory excavations, the remains of an 11th-century building were revealed, which were then used for the construction—the entire west and south walls and parts of the north and east walls sit upon carved stone slabs of medieval origins. In 1908 archaeological digs were started around the building by Kálmán Lux. During the twenties and thirties partial and then, under the supervision of László Gerevich in 1949—51, full-scale explorations were carried out on the spot. What all this twentieth-century research uncovered is that in the 13th century the king and later the queen had had a castle each standing on the spot of today’s Calvinist church, and that the stone built into these had been used in various constructions over the following centuries.

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