Baroque Rebuilding
Hungarian Architecture: Castles, Bridges & Grand Buildings
Course 1 · Chapter 4 · Baroque Rebuilding
When Buda was recaptured in 1686, the Habsburg monarchy gained a kingdom whose towns were damaged, depopulated or half-ruined after generations of war. What followed, mostly in the eighteenth century, was a great deal of rebuilding, and the style of the time was the Baroque. That is why so many Hungarian town centres, outside the capital's later grand boulevards, look the way they do: yellow and cream façades, twin-towered churches, arcaded squares. This chapter looks at the Baroque as a rebuilding programme rather than as a list of styles. Names, dates and attributions are given from general knowledge and flagged where they should be checked.
Why the Baroque Looks So Common
Four things came together after 1686 (check the emphasis, which varies between historians).
A blank slate
Much medieval and Ottoman-era building was damaged or lost. Where little stood, a new town plan could be laid out with straight streets and a central square.
The Church and the nobility
Catholic bishops, religious orders and great landowning families had money and a wish to be seen. Churches, seminaries and palaces were the main commissions.
Habsburg taste
The ruling house favoured the Baroque, and Vienna supplied architects, pattern books and ideas. Hungarian Baroque is often a provincial cousin of the Austrian version (check how far that is a fair description).
Peace, at last
With the border war over and population returning, towns had both the need and the means to build at scale.
The Royal Palace on Buda Hill
The medieval palace at Buda (see Hungarian Architecture: Castles, Bridges & Grand Buildings 2) had been wrecked in the siege of 1686. Baroque building on the hill began in the early eighteenth century, and the palace was enlarged substantially under Maria Theresa in the middle of the century (check the dates and the architects, who are usually named as including Jean Nicolas Jadot and Franz Anton Hillebrandt). It was a large, plain-fronted building rather than a showpiece. The palace was extended again in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and severely damaged in 1945, so what stands today is a layered building, and the Baroque core is only one part of it. Later chapters return to it.
Baroque Towns
| Town | What to look for | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Eger | The Minorite church and the Lyceum, with the Baroque episcopal town around them | The Lyceum is usually dated to the 1760s to 1780s and credited to Jakab Fellner; its library and ceiling painting are well known (check) |
| Győr | The old town around the cathedral, the Carmelite church and the merchants' houses | A border-fortress town that was rebuilt as an episcopal and commercial centre (check) |
| Székesfehérvár | The cathedral and the streets of the old centre | The medieval coronation city (Chapter 2) was largely rebuilt in the Baroque; little of the older town is visible (check) |
| Veszprém, Pápa, Zirc | Bishops' and abbots' palaces, churches and monastery buildings | Church patronage drove much of the building (check the details of each) |
| Pest and Buda | Smaller Baroque churches and houses, mostly lost to later rebuilding | Most of the Baroque city was replaced in the nineteenth century (check) |
Fertőd and the Esterházys
The Esterházy family were among the richest landowners in the kingdom, and their palace at Fertőd, in the north-west near Lake Fertő, is the grandest country house of the Hungarian Baroque. It was built mainly under Prince Miklós Esterházy in the second half of the eighteenth century, in a French-influenced style with a large courtyard and gardens, and is sometimes called the Hungarian Versailles (check the dates, the architect and the phrase, which is a common label rather than a precise comparison). The family employed the composer Joseph Haydn, who worked for them for decades and wrote much of his music for their court, including performances at Fertőd (check the details). The story of Haydn at the court belongs to Hungarian Music; here the palace is the subject, as a building made to impress a court.
Gödöllő
Gödöllő, east of Budapest, has another large Baroque palace, built in the eighteenth century for the Grassalkovich family (check the dates and the architect). It later became a royal residence. After the 1867 Compromise, Emperor Franz Joseph and Empress Elisabeth used it as a country retreat, and the empress is said to have been fond of it (check). It was used for other purposes in the twentieth century and has been restored and opened to visitors in recent decades (check the details).
Exercises
Give three reasons why the Baroque is so common in Hungarian towns, and explain how the pattern of a Baroque town centre can be recognised from a map.
Explain how Székesfehérvár shows that a rebuilding can hide the earlier history of a town, and where a visitor can find what remains of the older city.
Compare the palaces at Fertőd and Gödöllő: who built each, what was each used for, and what does each tell us about the people who commissioned it?
Quick Reference
- Period: mostly the eighteenth century, after the recapture of Buda in 1686
- Why so common: a blank slate, Church and noble patronage, Habsburg taste, returning peace
- Town plan: a regular central square with a church, town hall or palace
- Towns: Eger, Győr, Székesfehérvár, Veszprém, Pápa, Zirc
- Buda palace: Baroque core, enlarged under Maria Theresa, later extended and damaged in 1945
- Fertőd: Esterházy palace, second half of the eighteenth century; Haydn worked for the family
- Gödöllő: Grassalkovich palace; later a royal retreat
- Check: architects, "begun" versus "finished", the label "Hungarian Versailles"
Next chapter: The Chain Bridge and the Making of Budapest, which covers the reform era, the first permanent bridge across the Danube and the union of Buda, Óbuda and Pest.