Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Statue of King Stephen
Between the Fishermen's Bastion and the Mátyás Church, an equestrian
statue of King
Stephen
honours the founder of the Hungarian nation, whose conversion to Christianity and
coronation with a crown sent by the pope presaged the Magyars' integration into European
civilization. ThereliefatthebackoftheplinthdepictsSchulekofferingamodelofthechurch
to Stephen. Like the church and the bastion, his statue is reflected in the copper-glass facade
of the
Budapest Hilton
, incorporating chunks of a medieval Dominican church and monas-
tery on the side facing the river, and an eighteenth-century Jesuit college on the other, which
bears a copy of the
MátyásRelief
from Bautzen in Germany that's regarded as the only true
likeness of Hungary's Renaissance monarch.
KING STEPHEN
If you commit just one figure from Hungarian history to memory, make it
King Stephen
,
for it was he who welded the tribal Magyar fiefdoms into a state and won recognition from
Christendom. Born Vajk, son of Grand Duke Géza, he emulated his father's policy of try-
ing to convert the pagan Magyars and develop Hungary with the help of foreign preach-
ers, craftsmen and merchants. By marrying Gizella of Bavaria in 996, he was able to use
her father's knights to crush a pagan revolt after Géza's death, and subsequently received
an apostolic cross and crown from Pope Sylvester II for his coronation on Christmas Day,
1000 AD, when he took the name Stephen (István in Hungarian).
Thoughnotedforhisenlightenedviews(suchastheneedfortoleranceandthedesirability
of multiracial nations), he could act ruthlessly when necessary. After his only son Imre
died in an accident and a pagan seemed likely to inherit, Stephen had the man blinded and
poured molten lead into his ears. Naming his successor, he symbolically offered his crown
to the Virgin Mary rather than the Holy Roman Emperor or the pope; ever since, she has
been considered the Patroness of Hungary. Swiftly canonized after his death in 1038,
St
Stephen
became a national talisman, his mummified right hand a holy relic, and his coron-
ation regalia the symbol of statehood. Despite playing down his cult for decades, even the
Communists eventually embraced it in a bid for some legitimacy, while nobody in post-
Communist Hungary thinks it odd that the symbol of the republic should be the crown and
cross of King Stephen.
Ruszwurm patisserie
Along the road from the Mátyás Church the tiny
Ruszwurm patisserie
, at Szentháromság
utca 7, has been a pastry shop and café since 1827 and was a gingerbread shop in the Middle
Ages. Its Empire-style decor looks much the same as it would have done under Vilmos
Ruszwurm, who ran the patisserie for nearly four decades from 1884. Its two small rooms are
invariably packed to the gills, but its delectable
pastries
are most definitely worth sampling
