Hajós György: Heroes' Square - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2001)

provides the baths built in the park to this day. Its shaft is between the statue of Prince Árpád and the Cenotaph to Hungary’s Heroes with a plaque in honour of Vilmos Zsigmondy on its top. (Zsigmondy’s statue, sculpted in 1895 by Antal Széchy, stands nearby, in a small park opposite the main entrance to Széchenyi Baths.)

To cover the artesian well and at the same time to mark the closing of Sugár út, the Applied Arts Committee of Budapest had a temporary building raised to plans by Miklós Ybl. Above the cement dome, which was 2.5 metres high on the inside, was a hexagonal terrace that was girdled round by a balustrade and made accessible via a flight of steps flanked with another pair of balustrades. In the middle of the terrace was a metal flagstaff-support decorated with girdles and griffins, resting on some terraced stone discs and holding a 24- metre tall flagstaff. Between the stairs was a wall built of natural rock in front of which there was a well with a curb carved of stone. The erection separated the flow of traffic across the square in the two major directions of the park. The structure was demolished and then reassembled on Széchenyi Hill as a lookout tower when the construction of the Millenary Monument began.

Ybl’s gloirette with the main entrance to the Millenary Exhibition in the background

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