Buza Péter: Spring and Fountains - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1994)

brewery, sunk into the same layer, and intensely exploited. This fact can be seen as further evidence of how pure the water yielded by the spring is, for beer brewing requires top quality water.) This layer holds the karst water of a catchment area of about one and a half square kilometres in O-hegy [Old Hill].

Illés Fountain reappears in the documents later. For example when, in 1790, the municipality hired two Serbian master builders, Konstantin Zemjanovics and Demeter Athanezievics, to design a mains system running from here to Kálvin tér in the city. Unfortunately, the costs calculated at 14,000 forints gave the aldermen such a fright that they abandoned the plan altogether. A report pre dating this event by ten years gives an account of the erection of a protective structure above the spring-presumably for the first time in its history. Baron Al- vinczy had called upon the city to erect the structure, noting that Joseph II, who was to arrive in Pest to inspect some war games, “was wont to drink the water of the so-called Illés Fountain on the occasion of every previous military exercise.” Therefore, it was high time the place and its surroundings were properly tidied up.

We could go on citing many more references to designed watermains and to the fact that the well's famous tasty water was sold in bottles right up to the mid-19th century. We could also list the names of such personages as the poet Csokonai or the Writer András Fáy, who talked about the spring with overflowing enthusiasm. All this was only natural as the fountain was literally peerless in Pest, until it was phased out by changing customs and regulations limiting its use in the wake of the construction of the Ludovika Military Academy in the

The old well-house stands again

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