Szatmári Gizella: Walks in the Castle District - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2001)

Ferenczy lived here in the Sándor Palace until he bought his house in Országház utca. Between 1851 and 1859, the palace served as the residence of Archduke Albrecht, Hungary’s governor under Francis Joseph. Finally, the property was purchased from the Pallavicinis by the Government for the Prime Minister’s office. Premier Count Gyula Andrássy moved in as early as 1867.

Badly damaged and burnt out during World War II, the building is currently under reconstruction. Not far from its main entrance is the upper terminus of the “Buda hill track”, a funicular railway connecting Clark Adám tér below with the Castle above since March 1870. The idea of having it installed was conceived by Ödön Széchenyi, the construction being supervised by the designer Henrik Wohlfahrt.

Rising above Szent György tér was the church named after St. Sigismund, presumably built around 1410. As oral tradition had it, King Sigismund mortgaged thirteen towns in the Szepesség region and three crown estates to have a fitting place for the veneration of his own patron saint. The proportions of the long-gone church are suggested by the ruins of its walls and the fragments remaining of the pedestals of its supporting pillars. Still functioning in the early 18th century, the church was pulled down during the reign of Maria Theresa. Worthy of note is the fact that buried here lie the remains of King Matthias’s prematurely deceased first wife Katherine of Podjebrad (died 1464) and of Queen Anna of Candalei (sometimes referred to as Anne de Foix), wife of Wladislas II and mother of Louis II, the king who died at the battle of Mohács.

Opposite this are the ruins of apartment buildings from the Baroque period, the remnants of a battery and barracks, and the derelict Teleki Palace (built in 1787- 91), the similarly ruined former residence of Archduke Joseph and, farther away, the mid-19th century Royal Livery, which is also in a sad condition.

A memorial plaque dedicated to Péro Szegedinác is sunk into the ground some way in front of the Sándor Palace. Szegedinác, a former captain of the frontier guards in Békés County, led a doomed, because isolated, peasant uprising which broke out after the failure in 1711 of Ferenc Rákóczi’s War of Liberty. Szegedinác gave his life for his ideals.

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