Gerle János: Palaces of Money - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1994)

of Gothic cathedrals and for the flourishing of mediaeval culture, for example. However, due to its early arrival, the movement necessarily fell victim to an even more urgent evolution in which the free, independent and selfish individual emerged.

The origins of the wealth amassed by the powerful dynasties of bankers in the late Renaissance era can be traced back to massacres committed by Philip the Fair of France, who seized the wealth of the Knights Templars. (In Hungary it was Charles Robert of Anjou, relative and childhood friend of Philip the Fair, who ruthlessly obliterated the order.)

The great banking dynasties were held in high esteem and acquired great power, which opened the way to the highest offices. Many of the princes and popes of Leonardo and Michelangelo’s time were members of families that had become rich as bankers-the Gonzagas, the Estes, the Medicis. The banker who extended credit to Pope Julius II, a Medici, to finance his wars, hired Raphael to paint frescos in his villa, thus competing with the Vatican. The palaces of these bankers mirrored the wealth of their owners. It was precisely in order to emphasise a parallel with these mansions that the builders of banks in the second half of the 19th century chose these specimens of architecture as prototypes, since they represented the interpenetration and successful operation of ecclesiastic, state and financial powers, in an age whose social system and art were usually regarded as ideal (and which was seen as possibly the last such instance in history). Functionally, however, the bank palaces of the 19th century had hardly any real prototypes to look back on. The scene of banking operations had been, since the time of ancient temples, first the desk or bench (from which the word bank derives as we saw above), which was easy to set up and remove, to be followed by the hidden shop of the money-changer. Financial transactions on a larger scale were conducted inside the walls of the bankers’ own palaces. With the evolution of capitalism banks were faced by new tasks whose fulfilment went far beyond the confines of salons and money-changers’ shops.

The first central bank was formed in 1694 in England as a private company, and was soon granted sole right to issue banknotes. The pattern thus set was then followed by the formation of one national bank after the other, including the Banque de France established by Napoleon in 1800, and the Austrian National Bank

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