St Anne's Church: Baroque Heart of the Water Town
Why is it significant?
Two baroque towers, a gently curving front and a row of stone figures greet you at the southern edge of Batthyány tér. Step back towards the tram tracks to see the whole facade at once... it was designed to be seen from the river, and it still plays to that audience. After 1686, Buda was a ruin.
Key Facts
| Place | St Anne's Church: Baroque Heart of the Water Town |
|---|---|
| Address | Batthyány tér 7, 1011 Budapest, Hungary |
| Geo Coordinates | 47.50570, 19.03860 |
| Part of Walk | Water Town Secrets: Budapest's Víziváros from Batthyány tér to Gül Baba's Rose Garden |
| Generated | Generated |
Two baroque towers, a gently curving front and a row of stone figures greet you at the southern edge of Batthyány tér. Step back towards the tram tracks to see the whole facade at once... it was designed to be seen from the river, and it still plays to that audience.
After 1686, Buda was a ruin. The Ottoman town had been shattered by the siege, and the Habsburgs repopulated it with settlers, many of them German-speaking Catholics. In 1740 the parish of the Water Town began this church to designs by Kristóf Hamon, and when he died the work passed to Máté Nepauer. Construction dragged on for decades, but the result was the most ambitious baroque church in Buda, a statement that Catholic Christianity was back, and here to stay.
Inside, the high altar is pure theatre. The sculptor Károly Bebó carved a scene of the young Virgin Mary being presented at the Temple, with her mother, Saint Anne, beside her, all under a swirling canopy of gilded clouds and angels. The ceiling frescoes look baroque too, but they were painted much later, in the 1930s, by Pál C. Molnár. It is the same trick as the Capuchin Church: old bones, newer skin.
Saint Anne was a fitting patron for a parish like this one, a saint of mothers, grandmothers and households rather than of kings. While royalty lived up on the hill, the Water Town baptised its children, married its boatmen and buried its fishermen under these towers. The church survived the siege of 1944 and 1945 with damage, and it has gone on doing exactly that ever since.
Now turn around. The square in front of you opens straight onto the Danube, and the view from its river side is one of the best in the city. Walk across Batthyány tér to the embankment, and get ready for a building that fills the whole far bank.