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

column. The monument was thus transferred, together with the remains of Hentzi and his fallen comrades, to the Cadets School in Hűvösvölgy. On 1 November 1918, the monument was disassembled altogether. Pieces of the statues, which were sold at an auction, were deposited in museums as reminders of a historical era. However, the sarcophagi containing the bones has disappeared without trace.

The complex of the former Royal Palace rises at the southern end of Szent György tér.

In the very front stood the armoury, built between 1687 and 1736, the so-called Zeughaus. According to oral tradition, in its place—or nearby—there used to stand a fenced-around mulberry (or elder) tree, which played a major part in the story of one Ramocsaházy. The man, a captain of the hussars, was hanged by the Turks on the tree, but the sapling bent under his weight and the tall hussar’s toes reached the ground, which is how he was able to keep himself alive until his comrades came to the rescue. Appointed Castellan by Emperor Leopold I, Ramocsaházy lovingly tended his famous tree for a long time. Supposedly, the trunk of the same tree was carved into what was known as the “iron log”, a block into which travelling journeymen drove a nail, perhaps to leave a sign or a message. The log, it is said, stood at the corner of No. 22 Iskola utca, a street winding under the slopes of Castle Hill.

The Royal Palace gained the status of royal residence in the 14th century, when it had overtaken Visegrád and Esztergom in terms of social and political prestige. While Charles Robert still spent his time rather in Visegrád than in Buda, his son Louis the Great (ruled 1343-82) started to extend the Buda fortification, which dated from the time of the Mongol invasion, and to convert the stronghold into a royal palace. To this time, also, can be dated the so-called István Tower (on the site of today’s Budapest History Museum) and the Anjou Bastion, excavated and preserved at the northern end of Castle Hill (in the courtyard of the Military History Museum). Sigismund of Luxembourg also strengthened the castle walls, parts of which can be seen to this day at the southern end of Szent György tér. His “Fresh” Palace probably stood where the Museum of Contemporary Art/Ludwig Museum (formerly the Labour Movement Museum) and

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