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

cashier’s hall for foreign exchange (this was then upgraded in the mid-eighties).

Above the moulding which tops the base, a row of reliefs runs around the facades of the building featuring allegorical scenes alternating with naturalistic ones to illustrate the functions of money. On the Hold utca front there are figures carved by the sculptor József Róna, which show fundamental industrial and commercial activities against the background of exotic scenery, and the pictures also present the work of a money-changer; the Szabadság tér facade is decorated with the works of Károly Sennyei, on which symbolic figures of a contemporary mint, of the fine and applied arts and the sciences appear. It is worth having a good look at each of them on the spot. References to Hungarian landscapes, something that obviously has to appear in the system of symbols here, is in evidence in Béla Markup’s agricultural scenes: the figures of the shepherd and the herdsman are more romantic and their execution more detailed than the rest of the reliefs, their characters being familiar from the rural idylls of nineteenth-century genre painting. In the group symbolising the arts there is a mediaeval master builder with a piece of drawing lead in his hand; the model for the figure was Ignác Alpár.

Another sculpture of Alpár made by Ede Teles and erected by the architect’s friends after his death outside his best known work, the Vajdahunyad Castle, shows him wearing the same costume. And indeed, Alpár regarded the social role of the classic master builders, the “Baumeister”, as an ideal, and tried to recreate the trappings of such a role around himself. For decades he managed to maintain a celebrity status and a renown far wider than his profession in itself would warrant, due to his award winning designs, his grandiose, large scale buildings, and his frequent public appearances. He was the toast of a colourful table society, which he never failed to amuse at feasts, balls and trips organised by himself.

The interior of the building is amazingly rich. Its warmth and variety, its elegance notwithstanding, belies the cold haughtiness of the exterior. Alpár’s strength is his bold use of stairways, which reveal the impressiveness of the interior. In his later bank designs, too, he returns to the method of only connecting two storeys by a flight of steps, continuing the stairs elsewhere and with a different design. In such a manner the staircase is never separated from the interior space, and serves

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