Citadella Büfé
Citadella Gift Shop
Liberty Gift Shop
Citadella Café
Chimney Cake
Liberty Café
Walking between the Citadella’s southern and northern viewpoints, no visitor can resist lingering over the neo-Gothic marvel rising on the Pest bank of the Danube: the Hungarian Parliament Building. Its silhouette has become so inseparable from the capital that it seems to have stood there forever. Yet in the late nineteenth century, Tömő Square — today’s Kossuth Lajos Square — was an untidy, marshy strip of riverbank used as a rubbish dump. It took architect Imre Steindl’s vision and Hungarian engineering expertise to raise one of the world’s most beautiful parliament buildings on this yielding ground.
Construction began in 1885 and continued for almost two decades, becoming a truly national undertaking. The decision-makers of the day imposed a strict condition: only Hungarian building materials, local craftspeople and Hungarian industrial products could be used, from limestone quarried in the country to Miksa Róth’s ornate stained-glass windows and Zsolnay ceramics. The enormous building rested on a massive concrete basin sunk deep into the ground to withstand the Danube’s floods and the pressure of groundwater. Its interiors were equipped with the most advanced steam heating and ice-block cooling technology of the age.
This vast undertaking was preceded by an international architectural competition announced in 1882, in which Imre Steindl’s neo-Gothic vision triumphed. The choice was no accident: inspired by London’s Palace of Westminster, the lace-like towers, slender pillars and soaring arches symbolised parliamentary government, civil liberties and national independence. In an irony of fate that also testifies to the richness of Hungarian architecture, the designs of the unsuccessful entrants Alajos Hauszmann and Gyula Bukovics were also built, directly across the square from Parliament. Together, they created the impressive ensemble of the Palace of Justice, formerly home to the Museum of Ethnography, and the Ministry of Agriculture.
The figures and dimensions remain awe-inspiring to this day. The building is 268 metres long and 118 metres wide, with 691 rooms. Forty million bricks went into its walls, while its magnificent, almost lavish interiors incorporated half a million ornamental stones and forty kilograms of 22–23-carat gold applied by gilders. The perfectly symmetrical floor plan served more than an aesthetic purpose: the two identical debating chambers on either side of the central domed hall reflected the equal standing of the House of Representatives and the House of Magnates in the bicameral parliament of the time.
Yet this immense work, spanning decades, demanded a heavy personal sacrifice from its creator. Imre Steindl supervised construction tirelessly, attending to every small detail and drawing patterns for the stone carvings and joinery. As the years passed, however, his eyesight began to deteriorate rapidly. Tragically, the brilliant architect had become completely blind by the final stages of the work and died in 1902. He therefore never saw his life’s masterpiece — not fully completed until 1904 — in all its finished splendour, set within the panorama of the Danube.
When we look from beside the Citadella’s walls at the proportions of the 96-metre-high dome and the rows of turrets reflected in the water, we see more than a seat of legislation. We see the most ambitious and monumental statement of belief of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy era, embodied in stone.
