The secrets of “the Trevi Fountain of Budapest”, the Matthias Fountain

The Matthias Fountain, located in the court of the Buda Castle, is Budapest’s most beautiful and most popular water sculpture. Index shares an interesting bit of history of the creation of Alajos Hauszmann and Alajos Stróbl, depicting King Matthias Corvinus in the midst of hunting.

There are a lot of interesting stories regarding this sculpture grouping, such as:

• The hound in the middle was destroyed in 1945 and, although it was restored after the war, it is a much poorer quality work than the other two dogs are.

• Restoring the dogs’ leashes after the war was simply ‘forgotten’.

• One of the creators, Stróbl, got so wound up in the glorious days that one pleasant summer evening he recreated Matthias’ boar hunting with his students in his garden. To tell the truth, they only re-enacted the ‘final scene’, where they roasted the ‘boar’. It wasn’t actually a boar, it was a pig bought at the butcher’s.