On the clearest and sunniest day of the year so far, out in the distance beyond my window, the Elizabeth Lookout Tower gleamed like a lighthouse beacon atop János Hill, as reassuring as Notre-Dame de la Garde above Marseille. Yet that was the very day the announcement came of its closure, for the most necessary of reasons, its lower-floor café also shutting up shop. Those measures came into effect today.
Actually, ‘lower-floor’ is doing the elevation something of a disservice. As anyone who has strained their calves up the steep incline from leafy Normafa will tell you, there’s not much ‘low’ involved, it’s all an uphill struggle. Walkers are still welcome to hike the paths that snake around here, provided they keep their distance from each other. In normal times, though, hikers would stop and chat, their dogs inspecting each other, their children impatiently tugging at grown-ups’ sleeves to set off again. The scenery remains – it’s the social interaction around it that must now change.
Similarly, the narrow spiral staircase that ascends the lookout tower’s four levels and 100 steps no longer echoes with the many ‘thank yous’ of polite visitors given leave to pass fellow tourists halfway up, a single-file procession in sensible footwear. The view is, of course, spectacular, on certain mornings as far as the High Tatras over 200km away – but that’s all for another day. What concerns us here is the name of this landmark and its significance.
When architect Frigyes Schulek began work on the tower in 1908, Empress Elisabeth of Bavaria, Sisi to the many Hungarians who adored her, had been dead for ten years, the victim of a senseless attack by an Italian misfit who couldn’t even afford a stiletto. Obsessively thin, her hair so long it would give her headaches, Sisi skipped through her childhood with her favourite cousin, the later Ludwig II of Bavaria, he of the mad fairy-tale castles. At 15, she accompanied her elder sister being match-made to marry the recently crowned Emperor of Austria. Franz-Joseph, though, fell for the girl with the light brown hair and Sisi’s fate was sealed.
His ardour returned with four children but never love, Sisi spent a lifetime of capricious escape. Greece and Hungary became her boltholes, and she embraced them both fervently, learning their demanding languages. Her particular affinity for Hungary, where she would spend entire summers on horseback, knew no bounds. With Austria weakened after defeat to Prussia in 1866, she persuaded her pining husband to offer her adopted homeland a place at the imperial table. True, the savvy diplomacy of wise statesman Ferenc Deák and Count Gyula Andrássy, a close friend of Sisi’s, let’s say, also turned the tide in Hungary’s favour. Cherchez la femme, we might surmise.
In any case, the Compromise of 1867 made Budapest the twin capital of an extensive empire and paved the way for the creation of a dynamic, exquisitely crafted metropolis. No wonder, then, that Hungarians revere Sisi. The news of her murder by the tranquil waters of Lake Geneva in 1898 would have cut through the collective heart of the nation. Only two years before, the millennial celebrations of 1896 saw Budapest in its very pomp.
In truth, by the time Frigyes Schulek was designing the Elizabeth Lookout Tower, Hungary was already slightly on the wane. Schulek had spent 26 years painstakingly recreating the Gothic glory of Matthias Church and, alongside, had already reverted to this kind of Neo-Romanesque style for the Fishermen’s Bastion.
Now in his late sixties, spending more time at Balatonlelle, Schulek concocted a wedding cake of a building for the tower that would take Sisi’s name. He knew it would be the view, at 23.5 metres atop the 529 metres of János Hill, Budapest’s highest point, that would win over every visitor. Sisi would have remarked on this panorama, too, on one of her gallivants in 1882. The location of the tower was no coincidence.
And here it stands to this day, empty as we speak, its significance never diminished, its vista sublime.
