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

The southwest corner of the lake is where the building with the entrance hall and dressing-room of the facility stands. In winter the natural ice surface of the lake was popular with skaters as early as the 1830s. On 17 December 1870, as yet on a track not properly measured and without time-keeping, the first speedskating event was held here; the first official race took place in 1893.

The first figure-skating competition was held on 18 January 1891 on the ice of the lake and it was also here that the first European Championship in speedskating and figure-skating was held in 1895. Since 1909, the ice-rink on the City Park Lake has been used as the venue of World and European Championships in speed-skating on four and two occasions respectively.

Erected in 1875, the first dressing-room building was designed by Ödön Lechner, who created an the Art Nouveau style in architecture based on Hungarian folk art. Criticism published in the papers of the time was very favourable, pointing out that the designer had “managed to vitalise the lifeless material with the beauty and spirit that he had learnt from the French masters during his extended stay in Paris.” Music was provided by an ensemble playing on the large covered terrace of the building. (The construction was pulled down to clear space for the Millenary Exhibition in 1893.)

The Ice Rink, whose building in evidence today was designed by architect Imre Francsek, opened on a surface of 5,600 square metres in 1926.

Outside the entrance to the Ice Rink stands Zsig- mond Kisfaludi Strobl’s statue of the Archer. (The statue was originally set up on Margaret Island in May of 1925, when the artist made a present of his work to the Hungarian Athletics Club on the occasion of the club’s anniversary. Pulled down later, the statue was purchased by the municipality of Budapest in 1929 to set it up here.)

By the side of the Exhibition Hall stands a statue of St. Christopher. László Hűvös’s work was made in Paris, where it had deserved honourable mention at the spring 1910 exhibition of the Societé des Artistes Frangais. Given as a gift to the capital city by its maker,

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