Journal ARS 48 (2015) 1

Zoltán BERECZKI

The reconstruction of the Bratislava Franciscan Monastery’s tower in the 19th century. Pyramid or dome?

(Summary)

The tower of the Franciscan monastery in Bratislava was completely restored in the last decade of the 19th century under the supervision of Frigyes Schulek. It was first disassembled and then reconstructed. A garden pavilion was built in the Aupark (today Janko Kráľ Park) using the old stones. But there is an important difference between the tower of the monastery and the pavilion: while the aforementioned has a pointed, pyramid-like spire, the latter’s termination is curved and dome-shaped. As discussed in this article, over the decades it became widely accepted that the dome-shape is the original, mediaeval form, and the pyramidal spire is modern. The 19th-century reconstruction has also been referred to as a bad example in the (Czecho)slovak and Hungarian secondary literature. Especially the Hungarian literature formulated a very bad opinion in the second part of the 20th century about the reconstruction, mainly because of the “correction” of the dome-form. This article also discusses the events of the reconstruction, focusing mainly on the actual dismantling and construction works, relying on the files, drawings, and photos of the Commission for Historic Monuments (Műemlékek Országos Bizottsága, MOB), which can be found in the collections of the Gyula Forster National Centre for Cultural Heritage Management (Budapest). As a result, Schulek’s contemporary “report with expertise”, the archive photos, and the survey drawings all make it clear that the original spire was pyramid-shaped. None of them mentions the dome-shape and its “correction”. Schulek did not plan any new design; he let the superintendent László Gyalus build a more or less accurate copy of the old tower instead. However, the comparison of the archive photos, the reconstruction plans, and the existing tower shows several differences, as it is discussed in detail in this article with the conclusion that the theoretically identical three structures (the dismantled tower, the reconstructed tower, the garden pavilion) are in fact three different ones. The most important conceptual difference between the dismantled and the reconstructed tower can be observed on the spire. All the archive photos and the authors who have seen the original tower support the statement that the tower used to have an openwork spire earlier. This fact has great significance for the history of arts: this is the only known openwork Gothic spire on the territory of the one-time Hungarian Kingdom. The question of the origin of the dome shape still exists. The site survey of the garden pavilion brought the result that the stones in it are not in the same arrangement as they were before in the tower, so the dismantling could have happened without the intention of the stones' later use. It is likely that for the construction of the garden pavilion an unsorted mass of stones had to be used. Among the original stones, the ones in the spire could have been the most damaged. All in all, the most plausible explanation for the dome shape could be that Gyalus probably wanted to create a stylish termination for the pavilion at low cost, and the curved form is a plausible solution. The reconstruction of the Franciscan tower indicates a changing of principles in monument preservation: it is a more or less accurate copy of the unsustainable original. All in all, the reconstruction can be considered as a good example of its age, in spite of all the differences discussed in this article, mainly because of the preservation of the old stones.