Vajdahunyad Castle

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Vajdahunyad Castle, view from the northwest (2013)

The Vajdahunyad Castle ( Hungarian Vajdahunyad vára ) is a historicized castle in the City Park in the Hungarian capital Budapest . It was built in 1896 as part of the Budapest Millennium Exhibition, initially as a temporary building and was erected in its current form from 1901 to 1907 under the direction of Ignác Alpár . Since 1907 it has housed the Hungarian Agricultural Museum.

location

Vajdahunyad Castle is located not far from Heroes' Square in the center of the Budapest City Park. The castle is located on the island of Széchenyi-sziget within the man-made City Park Lake ( Városligeti-tó ), which is used, among other things, as an ice rink in winter. It is connected to the rest of the park by four bridges. The representative castle gate is located on the northwest side of the site.

history

View of the Gothic wing of Vajdahunyad Castle before the renovation (1900)

On the occasion of the millennial anniversary of the Hungarian conquest under Árpád , the focus of which was to be the Millennium Exhibition in the City Park, an architectural competition was announced in 1893 for the central pavilion group of the exhibition. In the second round, in which "true-to-original reproductions" of Hungarian national structures were required, Ignác Alpár's design prevailed. The focus of the plans was a replica of the main wing of the medieval Hunedoara Castle (ung. Vajdahunyadi vár ) in Transylvania . The name Vajdahunyad Castle quickly caught on for the entire building complex.

Alpár grouped the complex into three parts according to the architectural style of the pavilions: Romanesque, Gothic and Renaissance or Baroque buildings. In addition to Vajdahunyad Castle, numerous other buildings in the Kingdom of Hungary served as models. The Romanesque and Gothic buildings included the portal of the abbey church of St. George in Ják , the chapel of Csütörtökhely (today Spišský Štvrtok, Slovakia) and the Katherinentor in Brassó (today Brașov, Romania). The Renaissance and Baroque elements were inspired by several buildings in Upper Hungary. The interior fittings in the baroque part of the building were made by the Friedrich Otto Schmidt company and are based on the furnishings in Esterházy Palace in Fertőd .

Vajdahunyad Castle was initially built in 1896 as a temporary building for the Millennium Exhibition and should then be removed again. Due to its high popularity, the Hungarian parliament approved 2.4 million crowns in 1900 "for the construction of a permanent building [for] the agricultural museum". The reconstruction of Vajdahunyad Castle with permanent material began again in 1901 under the direction of Ignác Alpár. The opening ceremony, at which the Agricultural Museum also moved into the building, took place on June 9, 1907.

During the Second World War, the building was hit by six bombs in 1944/45, damaging the Renaissance and Baroque wings. The renovation, in which Alfréd Hajós was involved, was completed in 1948. During the fighting of the Hungarian People's Uprising , the castle suffered further damage and was only fully rebuilt between 1978 and 1985. Vajdahunyad Castle has been a protected architectural monument since 1991.

architecture

Vajdahunyad Castle is an important representative of Hungarian historicism . In the building complex there are numerous architectural styles in a smaller space, from Romanesque to Gothic and Renaissance to Baroque .

While the Romanesque and Gothic parts of the building are grouped around the style-defining replica of the Hunedoara Castle, the large part of the building in the Renaissance and Baroque styles is not directly modeled on another building. When designing the palace-like building, Alpár was inspired by the works of the baroque master builders Johann Lucas von Hildebrandt and Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach .

museum

Entrance area of ​​the agricultural museum

The Hungarian Agricultural Museum ( Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum ) takes up most of the wings to the right of the castle gate. It includes a nine-part permanent exhibition and changing special exhibitions. Rural tools, agricultural machinery and other objects of Hungarian agriculture and forestry are exhibited here. The exhibition is also devoted to fishing, viticulture , animal husbandry and the Hungarian flora. The museum has around 200,000 visitors annually (as of 2007).

In addition to the agricultural museum, the neo-Romanesque chapel, which is modeled on the abbey church of Ják, is open to visitors. Since 2015 the tower of the castle gate and the apostle tower (based on the model of the clock tower of Sighișoara / Segesvár) can be climbed.

Web links

Commons : Vajdahunyad Castle  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c József Sisa: The Millennium Buildings . In: József Sisa (ed.): Motherland and Progress. Hungarian Architecture and Design 1800–1900 . Birkhäuser, Basel 2016, ISBN 978-3-0356-1009-3 , p. 788-789 .
  2. ^ A b c György Fehér, Sarolta Szatmári: Centenary of Vajdahunyad Castle. In: Hungarian Agricultural Research , September 2007, p. 2 ( online )
  3. ^ The Museum. Description on the website of the Hungarian Agricultural Museum (English), accessed April 9, 2020.
  4. ^ Tower Tours. Information on the Hungarian Museum of Agriculture website, accessed April 9, 2020.

Coordinates: 47 ° 30 ′ 55 "  N , 19 ° 4 ′ 55"  E