Budapest: Buda Castle … Matthias Church

We started our day with a panoramic tour around Pest … our guide Valeria pointing out landmarks along the way. I don’t like panoramic tours. They are code for coach tours where if you get off the bus at all — which is rare — it is for a quick photo op. The saving grace this morning was that we’d be walking in Buda. I was so very happy when we finally made our way across the Chain Bridge and headed up to the Castle District for the second half of our tour.

Buses are not allowed at the very center of the Castle District, so we were dropped off a short distance away … near the WCs. Once everyone had taken advantage of the facilities, we walked around the corner and through what Valeria described as a residential area. As we got closer to the District center, shops and eateries were added to the mix of buildings.

Approaching Trinity Square, we spotted a beautiful, heavily ornamented building in the distance that we thought was our destination. We were wrong. We had to walk a couple hundred yards further for Matthias Church — formally, the Church of Our Lady of Buda Castle — to become visible. WOW! To my uninitiated eye, the style of the façade looked quite similar to the first building, but this one was far more grandiose, and it had a 255-foot tall bell tower that pulled the eye ever-upward.

While there was a church here that was founded in 1015, it was a smaller one. The current church was founded in 1242 by King Bela IV when he moved the royal residence from Esztergom to the Buda Hills … due to the destruction wreaked by Mongol invaders. One would think then that the church would have been named after King Bela. Rather it was named after King Matthias the Fair as he is the one who remodeled and expanded it in the Gothic style. That was in the 15th century. The bell tower was added at that time as well.

Matthias Church, which was used at times for the coronation of the emperors and empresses of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, has a long history … including being converted into a mosque during the Ottoman occupation. But if I get into all that, I’ll never finish writing. So, if interested, you can Google it.

Arriving at the entrance to the church, Valeria distributed our admission tickets and escorted us inside. Oh! WOW! I was pretty much left speechless.

There was color everywhere I looked … in the frescoes covering the walls from floor to ceiling … and the ceilings, too; in the stained glass windows; in the arches and columns; in the centuries-old pews; in the altar and the pulpit; in the giant candleholders sprinkled around; in the small museum where two balconies made the perfect vantage point for aerial shots of the church. I itched to take photos.

While the group sat down in the pews to listen to Valeria, I wandered around and exercised my shutter finger. The church was packed with people — independents and tour groups … ours alone brought in 42 people. I had to give up on people-less shots. Instead, I focused on the details. So glad I brought the camera with the long lens today as some of the details would have been well beyond the reach of my iPhone.Read more