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

latter would later become a national shrine. The Brandenburg Gate, raised a century earlier, between 1789 and 1794, was built, above all, for the personal use of the royal family. In the first designs made by Schicke- danz, the arched dual colonnade was connected by a portal. One of his plans shows a tall, treble-vaulted gateway, while another features a gate with a horizontal cornice, reminiscent of the Brandenburg Gate. Later he abandoned the idea of a portal so that the empty space between the colonnades could add emphasis to the column in the axis of Sugár út, and to the sculptural group of the chiefs leading the future country’s Magyar settlers. He made several sketches for the colonnade with one evoking the shapes of Mediaeval times. In the first designs the statues are set in cubicles with vaulted tops in a Romanesque architectural context, while a later version shows Gothic reminiscences. Obviously none of these buildings conceived in the spirit of various historical periods were reconcilable with the statues of kings wearing the costumes of later times. In consequence the colonnade was to be built in the style of the period of construction (and the end-point of the historical periods depicted). That was how, through the gradual alteration and refinement of its details, the version visible today took shape. All the designs mentioned here placed the statues of the Magyar chieftains on a high plinth in the focus of the colonnades with an angel on a column rising above this group. There is only one version with a different conception: here the

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