Last Day in Budapest

On our last day in Budapest, I took a photo of what we came to call "our church," from the vantage point of the 5th floor stairwell.




Then after the usual delicious and filling breakfast at Hotel Orion, we headed out over the Elisabeth Bridge for a stop at the oldest church in Budapest, the Inner City Parish Church (V. Március 15. tér 2). It has origins going back to the twelfth century and is also the site of the grave of the martyr Bishop Saint Gellért. During the Turkish occupation in the seventeenth century the church was converted for use as a mosque. After their expulsion and a great fire in 1723 it was rebuilt in baroque style, although the interior also contains Classical elements. Looking into the garden at the rear , I saw this fresh green ivy climbing up the centuries-old fence.



Then a walk by the famous St. Stephens Basilica,( Hungarian: Szent István-bazilika), named in honour of Stephen, the first King of Hungary (c 975–1038), whose mummified fist is housed in the reliquary. We did not drop in to see the fist! This structure, by the way, is, along with Parliament, the tallest building in Budapest.



We climbed the hill to Gul Baba's mausoleum, only to find it closed for repairs. (If you google the mausoleum, you can find photos of what we missed inside, one of the most beautiful resting places ever seen.) Gul Baba was a poet, and so the legend goes, introduced roses to the region that became Hungary. There were roses of several colors blooming around his tomb. The bronze sculpture of Gul Baba perched on a leafy promontory called Rose Hill is recent and constitutes a belated acknowledgement of the debt Budapest owes to its Ottoman heritage.

A companion of Sulayman the Great, Gul Baba was killed in the Turkish military campaign that captured Budin in 1541 following two earlier short-lived conquests (the modern Budapest was only formed in 1872 by a union of Budin on the Danubéis western bank and Pest in the east).

Gul Baba wrote poems and prose. Some of his manuscripts on mystics are to be found in the works Miftah al-Ghaib (Key of the Unseen). Some of his poems have been preserved for us is a small hand-written booklet, Guldeste (Bunch of Roses), although many of his manuscripts have probably been lost. He wrote all his works under the name of Mithali. (from Wikipedia)











No, the image below is not from a sci-fi exhibit. It's the interior of the Centennial Memorial, commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the city's unification, on Margit Island, a pastoral retreat in the midst of the busy city, with a singing fountain, trees, benches, and lots of green grass for picnics on weekends. We crossed the Margit (Margaret) Bridge to get there, and if we'd had more time in our last day, we would have lingered.



This sculpture looks like a huge seedpod to me, or a flower bud just opening. Both seem appropriate for the anniversary it celebrates. The inside of the pod looked very much like the interior of a time machine.



Walking toward Ferenciek tere to see the relief commemorating the Great Flood of 1838.



This relief gives a view of the tragedy that befell Budapest in 1838. Ferenciek tere is named after the Franciscan church on the corner of Kossuth utca, whose face bears a relief recalling the great flood of 1838, in which over 4 hundred people were killed. More would have died had not Baron Miklos Wesseleny personally rescued scores of people in his boat, depicted on the plaque outside the church.



Hasn't everyone wanted to stand beneath such a lion? Here I am before we crossed the Chain Bridge, guarded on both ends by these heroic lions.