If you know me, you know I’m keen on finding the paths less taken—meaning I love to see weird or obscure things. Which is how I found myself on a private tour of a Habsburg burial crypt hidden under the Buda Castle yesterday. I mean, it wasn’t supposed to be a private tour, but apparently no one else in all of Budapest was interested, including Rick.
But I sure was.
Behind a somewhat secret door in the Hungarian National Gallery are steps that take you down to hushed sanctuary where members of the Hungarian branch of the Habsburg dynasty are entombed. I was with my tour guide, who because I can’t remember her name we’ll call Tour Guide, and a docent, who for the same reasons we’ll call Docent. Tour Guide was lovely if maybe just a little too into the glory of the Hapsburgs, and she breathlessly ran down their history in Hungary, which I will shorten for you here:
Blah blah medieval castle destroyed by the siege to retake Buda from the Turks in 1686 blah blah rose from the ashes as a Baroque palace by 1719 blah blah Empress Maria Theresa blah blah evolving grandeur.
The important bit is that they built a small palace chapel and crypt during one of the expansion phases. The chapel was used by an order of uncloistered nuns called “English Ladies,” which totally does not sound like a euphemism. The side chapel was where they kept King Saint Stephen’s old dead hand for a while, too. Because gross. Initially, the crypt held the bodies of the nuns and residents of the castle district, but only for a while because the chapel and crypt fell into disuse for about 45 years.
That brings us to 1820 when a new palatine, Joseph, moved into the castle as the emperor’s representative in Hungary. And the Hungarians loved him. He was a decent guy who used his influence as the emperor’s little brother to make some serious changes that transformed Buda and Pest from a rural outback into a bustling center of commerce, education, and science.
But his personal life sucked. His first wife was a Russian princess, and she and her baby died at childbirth after just a year of marriage. His second wife was a German princess he married after 14 years as a widower. Guess what? She died in childbirth, too, as did the premature twins she delivered. He married for a third time a couple years later. Their first child died at just 23 days old, and their second at the age of 12.
Ugh.
It was when his son died that Joseph converted the existing chapel into the official burial place for his family and transferred his previous wives’ and children’s remains to the crypt. They had to exhume the people who were buried in the walls, but he reburied them under the floor and create a plaque with their names. Awww…what a nice guy.
The whole thing is actually three rooms—a little chapel with a simple altar, a nearly empty middle room that has just two sarcophagi, and the main crypt with 12 sarcophagi—all decorated in art nouveau style
And you know what? It. Is. Beautiful. And super peaceful. Even with Tour Guide nattering away in your ear.
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