Simply the building with the most beautiful roof in Budapest...
Let's see the history of the building and the mastermind of architect behind it!
The founding of the Postal Savings Bank was a significant step in facilitating investment and economizing for the middle classes, public servants, workers and farmers. According to the scheme, post offices functioned as branches, fulfilling an intermediary role. The Hungarian Royal Postal Savings Bank was established in 1885. Being a state institution, therefore entitled to state warranty, social considerations were prominent from the very start. This in turn ensured the institution’s positive reception, spurring a dynamic growth of clientele.
The building’s design reinforced the bank’s programme; bees, symbols of frugality adorn the pillars, as if making their way towards the ceramic hives. This motif reappears on the captions of the courtyard columns. Other imaginary and realistic creatures inhabit the edifice: snakes, hens, dragons come to the view of the observer. The tallest tower in the middle of the roof hosts two bulls: copies of the drinking bowls from the Nagyszentmiklós treasure, cast from saffron hue Zsolnay majolica.
A feat of Hungarian Art Nouveau, the Postal Savings Bank is also the epitome of Lechner’s art. Lechner’s head of hair was already turning white, when on the verge of retirement, he found his genuine style, and to quote his own words, ‘really started working’. Considered as his masterpiece by many, the Postal Savings Bank does not so much invoke Asia in its elements, but establishes a uniquely Hungarian style. Detaching itself from the past, it looks forward to the future; even a lay viewer can attest that none of its parts refer to a bygone style or era. Round the windows and doors, the battlement, the familiar floral patterns of Hungarian folk art undulate. When asked, why he had put such effort into designing the tile patterns on top of the roof, when no one would be able to see it, Lechner’s cryptic answer ran that 'the birds would...
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