Zádor Anna: Neoclassical Pest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1993)

it. This building was planned and constructed by Mátyás Zitterbarth, Jr. (1803-1867), who belonged to the third generation of a family of architects working in Pest but of Austrian origin. The construction of a National Theatre had already been considered in 1816 and various plans had been made for it. It was in 1835 that Zitterbarth was commissioned to prepare his plans for its construction. The opening ceremony of the theatre was greeted with great enthusiasm and took place in 1838. The audience stood in front of a simple, closed and almost square-shaped multi-storey building. The sides and centre of the facade were decorated with peristyles, on which the wide cornice rested. The colonnaded ramp in front of the central section of the building did not diminish the rather massive character of the facade. The shape of the spacious inner peristyle and that of the auditorium were more delicate and more successful. All in all, we can conclude that it was the long-awaited realization of a dream: the existence of the first permanent Hungarian theatre. It was this fact, rather than the simple building itself, which induced the ecstasy of the contemporaries. Built after all the numerous difficulties had been overcome, the National Theatre was more than just the scene of more sophisticated entertainment or the permanent home of the theatrical art performed in Hungarian; it was an important part of the process which led the nation from reform parliamentary sessions to the revolution in 1848, thus laying the foundations of a modern Hungary. At that time the theatre had a sort of mission, in which writers and actors as well as spectators felt it important to take part. At a time in history when the economy had just started to pick up, it is understandable that culture played a more active part and became more important in the ascent of the nation. The shortness of available funds was not able to prevent culture from undertaking this role; it only increased the generosity of individuals. This was how Zitterbarth’s essentially simple theatre building became one of the symbols of a progressive nation. Clnfortunately, this theatre did not survive to see the turn of the century either, so we can gain some insight into it from contemporary depictions.

The greatest achievement among Pest’s large cultural establishments was the construction of the Nation19