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

Hungarian citizenry of Buda Castle. Its former proportions are suggested by the remnants of the wall and the fragment of the tall and narrow, vaulted window of the former chancel, which stood on its corner and now serves as a rather peculiar memento. During the Turkish occupation until the fall of the city of Eger in 1596, this was the only church that was allowed to remain Christian in the Castle District. After that it, too, was converted and renamed Victory (or Watchmaker’s) Mosque. After 1686, it was returned to the Franciscans, although for a while, between 1786 and 1790, it was used to house archives. Frances 1, wearing a silk Hungarian ceremonial costume for the occasion, was crowned here in 1792. It was then that the still extant Louis XVI style ante-chamber, built to plans by József Tallher, was added to the eastern side.

A sad episode occurred between the walls of this church when, in 1795, before his execution and as a secondary punishment, Ignác Martinovics was divested of his priestly office.

In 1817 the building was converted into a garrison church on the orders of Prince Ferdinand of Este (grandson of Maria Teresa, chief military commander of Hungary at the time).

There are cracked, bullet-scarred tablets on the wall of the garrison church and of other buildings. Inscriptions on these tablets recount the history and fame of the buildings they are attached to. The instalment of these informative inscriptions was suggested by Professor Lajos Arányi on the unlikely occasion of an 1864 general assembly of surgeons and “natural philosophers”. Putting up the first twenty of these tablets was financed from the proceeds of a fund-raising campaign. Although the inscriptions were composed by the Archaeological Committee of the Academy, not all the information thus imparted has been borne out by more recent research. By now the tablets themselves have become valuable parts of our archaeological heritage with no little interest for the historian of the sciences, which is why they have been allowed to keep their original form and positions.

By the side of the church stands the above-mentioned well-figure of Artemis, which was moved here from its former place in Iskola (today Hess András) tér.

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