Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
trefoil-arched cornice on the house next door, while the one beyond has been rebuilt in its
original fifteenth-century form.
Úri utca
Úri utca
(Gentleman Street) boasts historic associations, for it was at the former Franciscan
monastery at no. 51 that the five Hungarian Jacobins were held before being beheaded on the
“Blood Meadow” below the hill in 1795. As you walk down the street from Kapisztrán tér,
notice the statues of the four seasons in the first-floor niches at nos. 54-56, Gothic sedilia in
the gateway of nos. 48-50, and three arched windows and two diamond-shaped ones from
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries at no. 31. In the wall at no. 27 is a ventilation shaft for
the secret hospital below.
Telephone Museum
Telefónia Múzeum • I, Úri utca 49 • Tues-Sun 10am-4pm • 500Ft • 1 201 8857
At Úri utca 49 is a wing of the Poor Clares' cloister that served as a postwar telephone ex-
change, before being turned into a
Telephone Museum
. It charts the development of tele-
phone exchanges since their introduction to Budapest in the early 1900s, activating a noisy
rotary one that's stood here since the 1930s - a quieter, more streamlined modern exchange
still operates here. You're invited to dial up commentaries in English or songs in Hungari-
an, check out the webcam and internet facilities, and admire the personal phones of Emperor
Franz Josef, Admiral Horthy and the Communist leader János Kádár.
The Hospital in the Rock
Sziklakórház • I, Lovas út 4/c - down the steps at the western end of Szentháromság utca and 50m to the right
• Tues-Sun 10am-8pm; visits by guided tour only, every hour on the hour • 3600Ft • 70 701 0101,
szik-
Some six to fourteen metres beneath the Vár's streets lie 10km of galleries formed by hot
springs and cellars dug since medieval times. In 1941, a section was converted into a military
hospital staffed from the civilian Szent János hospital, which doubled as an air-raid shelter
after the Red Army broke through the Attila Line and encircled Budapest in December 1944.
Inthe1950s,anuclearbunkerwasaddedtothecomplexandwassecretlymaintained inread-
iness until 2000, a time capsule of the Cold War. Ramped throughout for wheelchairs and
trolleys, its operating theatres contain 1930s military field X-ray and anaesthetic machines
(used in the film
Evita
in 1996) and gory waxworks; bed-sheets in the wards were changed
every fortnight until 2000.
The ventilation system is run by generators installed in the
nuclear bunker
built in 1953,
with charcoal air-filters, a laboratory for detecting toxins, atropine ampoules to be injected
against nerve gas, and an airlock fitted when the bunker was enlarged between 1958 and
1962. To preserve its secrecy, fuel was delivered by trucks pretending to “water” flowerbeds
on the surface, via a concealed pipeline.
