Artwork of the Month – June 2022

By presenting the artificial ruins that still stand on the lot of the former Hauszmann summer home in the Anna-major section of Szentendre’s Izbég district we would like to put the spotlight on the architect and university professor Alajos Hauszmann. This year is the 175th anniversary of his birth.

Hauszmann raced in his carriage from the station to the quiet estate he had purchased in 1882 from the Sirmai family so he could refresh himself from the stresses of the capital. He had conjured up a little palace from the ramshackle house that stood there, which he then traded for an estate in Velence in 1913. After his death in 1926, his widow bought the place back.

The owner constructed artificial ruins in the park surrounding the villa using parts of the former Zeughaus, as well as several Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque fragments from the Buda Castle, such as molded bricks, column capitals, railing sections, and mullions from lancet windows.

We know from a document from 1966 that a few years before then, at the beginning of the 1960s, the villa had been demolished and a resort had been constructed for the national guard on its site. The artificial ruins still stand, but the area is in poor condition.

 

Compiled by Zsuzsanna Bakó