The Budapest Chronicles — 9 St Stephen’s Basilica
I love to look around churches. Wherever we go. Whether it is the grand masterpieces such as La Sagrada Familia, or St Paul’s Cathedral, or the little medieval village churches such as St Thomas A Becket at Brightling. I like to nose around and see what has been built, and what is unique to that place of worship.
I was fairly reserved in Budapest, there are a lot of churches, but the one I was saving myself for was St Stephen’s.
It’s not as if you can miss it. Walking to get the HoHo bus on the first day, we got the view up the side street to it. We could see it from Buda side, up at the Citadel, in front of the castle, on Fisherman’s Bastion. We could see it from the river on the river boat tour, we could see it when we were on the Ferris wheel. If our room had been on the other side of the hotel, we’d have been able to see it from there.
And we passed it a number of times. It was the start / end of the loop for the HoHo bus, and we’d see it lit up at night when going out for meals, but we didn’t go there until the last day in Budapest. A lovely sunny day, where we bought some pastries from Lidl and sat having lunch with the Basilica looming over us.
We paid for entry to the basilica, treasury, and gallery, and then had to pay another 100 forints to get inside the actual basilica. Twenty-five pence well spent.
The basilica itself, is an overload of magnificent marble and glorious gold. An overload to the senses. You could stand anywhere in the basilica and look in any direction and you would just be left saying wow!
The treasury is smaller than expected, with less items in that you would have though a church this large and grand, but then I remind myself that it is less than 120 years since it was completed.
The viewing gallery is amazing, yes, my sense of vertigo kicks in as it always does when we climb up to the top of these amazing churches, but it is worth it every time. The views are spectacular across the city, and you really do get the sense of just what an enormous building this is.
History time.
The church is named after Saint Stephen I of Hungary, the first King of Hungary (c. 975–1038), whose incorruptible right hand is housed in the reliquary.
It is equal with the Hungarian Parliament Building, as one of the two tallest buildings in Budapest at 315 ft — this equation symbolises that worldly and spiritual thinking have the same importance. Regulations prohibited for a long period the construction of any building taller than 315 ft in Budapest. It has a width of 180 ft, and length of 287 ft. It was completed in 1905 after 54 years of construction, according to the plans of Miklós Ybl, and was completed by József Kauser. Much of this delay can be attributed to the collapse of the dome in 1868 which required complete demolition of the completed works and rebuilding from the ground up.
The architectural style is Neo-Classical; it has a Greek cross ground plan. The façade is anchored by two large bell towers. In the southern tower is Hungary’s biggest bell, weighing over 9 tonnes. Its predecessor had a weight of almost 8 tonnes, but it was used for military purposes during World War II.
At first, the building was supposed to be named after Saint Leopold, the patron saint of Austria, but the plan was changed in the last minute, so it became St. Stephen’s Basilica.
The Basilica is rich in fine arts. In the lobby of the main entrance, you can see the Saint Stephen’s relief of Károly Senyei, and mosaics by Bertalan Székely and Mór Than. The dome above the sanctuary shows the representation of the Lord God, and the tambourine shows Christ as well as the prophets and evangelists (built by Károly Lotz). The sanctuary vault features allegories of the Holy Mass on mosaics by Gyula Benczúr and highlights the important stages of St. Stephen’s life in the bronze relief series by Ede Mayer. The canopy altarpiece designed by József Kauser is decorated with the statue of St. Stephen by Alajos Stróbl.
I would definitely recommend that anyone visiting Budapest makes this a must-see location.
For the rest of the pieces on our Budapest trip, I have created a list with all of the chronicles on
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