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

ornaments in mock Baroque style, besides the sphinxes, sculpted by Ignác Langer, two of which rested on tall plinths on each cornice of the colonnades. As a contemporary press report noted, “although meant to be a temporary construction, it creates the perfect illusion of being a stone edifice”. The gate was nonetheless demolished after the exhibition.

In 1894, when preparations for the Millenary celebrations were under way, Árpád Feszty painted, in collaboration with nine other artists, the huge cyclorama entitled The Arrival of the Magyars. To exhibit the painting he took out a lease for 32 years from the city on an area of some 2,500 square feet on the spot of today’s Museum of Fine Arts. The painting quickly became popular in the festive atmosphere of the Millenary, but the nondescript building where it was kept, looking as it did like a gas-holder, was a bit of an eye-sore. In compliance with a precondition of erecting the Museum of Fine Arts, the government pulled down the building after paying off the sum outstanding on it. The cyclorama was removed to a wooden structure erected where today’s Amusement Park lies. (The picture is now on show in the National Historical Memorial Park at Ópusztaszer.)

At the time the architectonic structure of the Millenary Monument and the Museum of Fine Arts were completed, they were as yet surrounded by greenery all the way to the line of Aréna út (today’s Dózsa György út)

Postcard with the view of the square from 1928

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