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

lation of the area with drinking water for centuries. In time the labyrinth was appropriated, enlarged, walled- in and converted into cellars by the citizenry of Buda. There are a few medieval columns and vault-fragments to recall the 14th and 15th centuries, indicating the regular use of the caves at the time. Vaults and dug- out wells from the Turkish period also survive. There is written evidence that the corpses littering the streets after the siege of 1686, when the Turks were expelled, were brought into the cave-cellars, as there was no way of taking them elsewhere. Scientific excavations commenced in 1931.

During World War II the caves were converted into air-raid shelters, and there was also a so-called rock hospital.

Following reconstruction, certain sections of the network are open to the public (entrance at No. 9 űri utca).

Opposite the Korona confectionery at the corner of Disz tér there is a small traffic island, in the middle of which stands Zsigmond Kisfaludy Strobl’s Hussar Contemplating his Sword. Copies of a 1926, small-scale model of the statue, made by the Herend Porcelain Factory, soon became a much sought-after item. The life-size bronze statue was erected in 1932 on private initiative and with the financial assistance of Rudolf Serényi, a Hungarian industrialist living in Zurich. Participants of the 1988 International Hussar Convention placed a plaque by the foot of the statue to mark the 300th anniversary of the establishment of the first regular hussar regiment.

Palota út leads down from here to Krisztinaváros.

These routes through the Castle District are now concluded as we walk past the arch recalling the Fehérvár Gate. On its north side there is a plaque commemorating the victorious recapture of Buda Castle by the Hungarian army on 21 May 1849. Damaged in 1849, the gate was shortly restored, only to be demolished in the preparations for the 1892 celebrations marking the 25th anniversary of Francis Joseph 1 having been crowned King of Hungary. The gate, it seems, was in the way.

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