Földes Mária: Ornamentation - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1993)
was this period, too, which saw the birth of the most beautiful and outstanding specimens of Hungary’s own architecture and decorative art. Let us set out on our walk then. The location we shall visit is the city centre, an area stretching from Váci utca to Szabadság tér. The sights have been selected so as to include a sample of each architectural style mentioned above. However, we also hope that by the end of our walk, out of the multiplicity of impressions, an overall view unique to Budapest will emerge-a vivid picture evoking that fascinating age, the bustling and yet jovial, varied and still consistent period, in which these buildings were erected. Every visitor to Budapest walks at least once along Váci utca, this pedestrian precinct of the capital. Let us now do that in a somewhat different manner. What we should do is raise our eyes above the level of the shop windows. Displays exactly like or strikingly similar to these can be found anywhere in Western Europe. The world above them, however, is much more promising. This world offers the freshness of discovery, the beauty and variety of detail, the challenge of guessing at the architect’s and sculptor’s personalities encoded in the suggestive ornamentation, and the magic of the unique as opposed to the uniform. And, as we walk on later, it is as old friends that we are greeted by the familiar details, the structural and decorative elements, or the similar and yet different way spaces are formed in the work of an individual architect or sculptor. To the more adventurous we suggest that, discouraging circumstances notwithstanding, they should leave the street and enter the buildings alongside it. It will be worth discovering the details on the inside, too, as the architects of the time, in the true spirit of the period, paid careful attention to these. The interiors of these buildings, the staircases and lift shafts, the banisters and balcony railings, the covering materials, the mosaics, the glass windows and the reliefs were perfectly harmonized with the facades to represent a level of craftsmanship rarely seen today. We are confronted with a professional mentality which was the norm at the time, but which is now met with incredulity. Everybody went about their business as best as they possibly could, at the highest possible degree, from the designer and the 9
