Holy Trinity Square & Matthias Church: The Diamond-Tiled Crown

Why is it significant?

Stand in the center of Holy Trinity Square and look up at the dazzling geometric kaleidoscope of orange, green, and turquoise glazed ceramic tiles crowning the roof of Matthias Church.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Stand in the center of Holy Trinity Square and look up at the dazzling geometric kaleidoscope of orange, green, and turquoise glazed ceramic tiles crowning the roof of Matthias Church. Formally consecrated to Our Lady, the church bears the name of Renaissance King Matthias Corvinus, who held both of his royal weddings beneath these soaring Gothic arches in the fifteenth century.

During the one hundred and forty-five years of Ottoman Turkish rule after fifteen forty-one, the church was whitewashed and converted into the Grand Mosque of Buda. In sixteen eighty-six, during the decisive battle to liberate the city, a Christian cannonball struck the mosque wall, dislodging a plastered niche to reveal a long-hidden statue of the Virgin Mary to the praying Janissaries, who panicked and fled, hailing the Miracle of Buda.

The brilliant diamond-patterned roof tiles were manufactured in the nineteenth century by the celebrated Zsolnay ceramics factory in Pécs using their secret weather-resistant eosin glaze.

Walk directly behind the church apse onto the white limestone balustrades of the Fisherman's Bastion.