Gál Éva: Margaret Island - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2000)

at low water levels, to be of Roman origin. Twentieth- century digs have not, however, borne out these hypotheses. Very few Roman stones have been found here, and even those were probably brought from elsewhere. However, it is not inconceivable that there were once Roman bridgeheads at the northern and southern tips built to facilitate the crossing of the river, even if every trace of such construction has by now disappeared.

It was in the centuries following the occupation of the Carpathian Basin by the Magyars that Margaret Island entered history, at least in the sense that the earliest written documents and archaeological finds can only be traced back to the late twelfth century. Prior to that— before the erection of the first building whose existence is documented in written or archaeological sources—it is likely to have been just like any other shrubby alluvial island in the Danube.

The first reference to the island in a Hungarian source is made in a deed dated 1225 in which Andrew II donated the entire territory of the Island of Hares to St. Michael’s Church, the provostal church of the Premonstratensian order, which had recently settled down on the island. The name “Island of Hares” suggests that the place had been used as a hunting ground, apparently owned by the royal court. This is reinforced by the fact that in the late twelfth century the island was also used as a temporary royal residence: King Emeric, reigning from 1196 to 1204, frequently kept court here.

The first remarkable period in the island’s history began around the end of the twelfth century to reach its zenith by the middle of the thirteenth; it was then that significant ecclesiastical and royal buildings were erected, which then became the scenes of momentous historical events. Although this was followed by a decline beginning at the end of the thirteenth century, the presence of church institutions, of nuns and monks remained a dominant feature in the island’s history until the Ottoman occupation of the country when, in 1541 at the latest, the inmates of the monasteries departed permanently. Legally, however, the Dominican nuns, who escaped to the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary (first to Nagy9