Gellert Baths

 

 

On our last day in Budapest we decided to cross Szabadsag hid (Liberty bridge)  and pay our second visit to Buda.

 

The bridge affords great views across the river

 

 

 

 



 

this is the closest we got to the Cave Church as we did not have time to visit

 

 





 

 

We didn't have much time, just enough to have a look at Gellert baths and hotel. An Art Nouveau building it opened in 1918 and was commandeered as staff headquarters by the Reds, and the Romanian army at different times in its history. During the 1930s and 1940s the hotel's balls were the highlight of Budapest's social calendar, when debutantes danced on a glass floor laid over its pool.

 

 

 

It has a magnificent grand entrance

looking closer

the whole building is a gem.

 

A look at that bridge again before entering the building

 



 

 

 

and a closer look at the church. 

 

  

 

 

Great wrought iron entrance as one would expect from Budapest by now,

and in we went.

A closer look at that magnificent ceiling

 

The main hall with the baths on the right, but we were not allowed to go in there unless swimming

 



 

 

beautiful floor, grand statues, stained glass, magnificent ceiling

a closer look at one of the statues and the majolica tiles behind it

 

gorgeous stained glass.

 

 

 

Dohany utca Synagogue, Budapest

 

 

Dohany utca Synagogue in the Erzsebetvaros district of Budapest, is Europe's largest synagogue and the second biggest in the world after the Temple of Emmanuel in New York, with 3600 seats and a total capacity for over 5000 worshipers.

 

Designed by Ludwig Forster, the building epitomises the so-called Byzantine-Moorish style that was popular in the 1850s. It was restored in the 1990s.

 

 

 

 

 

The interior was designed by Frigyes Feszl. It's quite magnificent: arabesques and Stars of David decorate the ceiling 

 

 

 

the balconies for female worshippers are surmounted by gilded arches

 

 

 

 

the floor is inset with eight-pointed stars

 

 

 

One of the lobbies

a closer look at the ceiling

 

 

 

 The museum is on the second floor

 

  

 

 

 

and the last room is dedicated to the Holocaust.

 

 

 

 

Chilling photographs and examples of anti-Semitic propaganda

Have we seen enough photos of the Holocaust? Has their message got through? Obviously not, as fascism is rearing its ugly head all over Europe again.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cemetery beside the Synagogue only exists at this spot because the Nazis forbade Jews from being buried elsewhere - one of many calculated humiliations inflicted by the local SS commander Eichmann on the Jewish quarter which was by then a walled ghetto. Some 2281 Jews are interred beneath simple headstones, erected immediately after the Red Army's liberation of the ghetto on January 18, 1945.

 

 



 

 

 

The Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Garden is at the back of the Synagogue

 

 



 

 

 

The garden is named after the Swedish consul who saved 20,000 Jews during WWII. Armed with diplomatic status and money for bribing officials Wallenberg and his assistants plucked thousands from the cattle trucks and lodged them in 'safe houses', manoeuvring to buy time until the Russians arrived. He was last seen alive the day before the Red Army liberated the ghetto: arrested by the Soviets on suspicion of espionage, he died in the Gulag.

 

 



 

 

 

Glass panels by Klara Szilard

 

 

 

 

Names, names, names. The garden is full of plaques of the names of those who were killed

 

 



 

 

 

The park's centrepiece is the Holocaust Memorial by Imre Varga, shaped like a weeping willow, each leaf engraved with the names of a family killed by the Nazis.

 

 

 

 



 

it's very beautiful and very moving

 

 

 

 

Also, in the garden

 

 

 

 

looking closer

and closer.

 

Also in the garden, the Heroes' Temple, erected in 1929-31 in honour of the 10,000 Jewish soldiers who died fighting for Hungary during WWI. These days it serves as a synagogue for everyday use.

 

 

The Memorial Garden is a very moving place, as is the story of Raoul Wallenberg himself.

 

 

 

 

As we were walking towards the metro, we came upon this wonderful Art Nouveau building

 

 

 

 

The experience of the Museum, the Memorial Garden and then coming across such a beautiful building, this contrast, somehow seemed to encapsulate our experience of Budapest as a whole - the people of Hungary suffered so much, in so many different ways, by so many different hands during the 20th century and it all happened in the middle of so much beauty...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest - the permanent collection

 

 

Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. We enjoyed our visit to the Museum: there was a Toulouse Lautrec exhibition which was fun, the 20th century collection was very interesting, and I spent a long time looking for Jael and Sisera by Artemisia Gentileshi which I knew was part of their permanent collection and I was very keen to see it. So, not much time to have a look at the rest of their collection, but here is a very small sample:

 

Paul Gauguin, The Black Pigs, 1891

 



 

 

 

Claude Monet, Breakwater at Trouville, Low Tide, 1870

 





 

 

Pierre Bonnard, Dining Room at Grand-Lemps, 1899

 

Gustave Courbet, The Spring in Fouras (A Painter with his Model), 1863

 

  

 

 

Gustave Courbet, The Blonay Castle, 1875

 

 

 

 

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Sermon of Saint John the Baptist

 

Rembrandt Van Rijn, Scholar at a Table with Books and Candlestick, 1642

 

 

 

Rembrandt Van Rijn, Joseph's Dream, 1650s

 

Jan Jansz Van der Velde, Still Life with an Orange and Glasses, 1651

 

 

 

 

 

Pieter de Hooch, A Woman Reading a Letter by Window, 1664