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

Ruins of the cloister church

responsible for this curious amnesia. Otherwise, an archaeologist uncovering new and important finds north of the church has recently found a wall of the thirteenth century royal palace that was only demolished around 1800, possibly to clear more space for the landscaping work carried out under Palatine Joseph.

It is also regrettable that it took almost three-quarters of a century after 1838 for professional excavations to begin in 1914 on the site. Interrupted by World War I, the work was resumed in the 1920s then, after another interval, more intensive archaeological work was made possible in 1937-38 by the construction of the Open-Air Theatre, to which we’ll return below. (It was here, right next door to the theatre under construction that the huge amounts of earth required were most readily available.)

Archaeological excavations continued in the 1950s and resumed recently, uncovering detail after detail of an expansive complex of medieval buildings and answering one question after the other. Thus we can now form a fairly clear picture of what an important group of ecclesiastical buildings once dominated the Island of Hares.

Of the uncovered ruins, the nave, sanctuary, and parts of the western wall and pillar, flooring, and certain collapsed architectural segments of a remarkably long, single-nave church are visible, together with the foundation

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