Culture Budapest

Fischer Rézi on Kristóf tér

A girl with a fish who moved from the fish market to a park, disappeared, and came back out of a warehouse, on a square named after a vanished giant.

2 min readKristóf tér

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László Dunaiszky's Haláruslány fountain on Kristóf tér

This is one of the smallest squares in the old town, and in the middle of it stands a stone fountain with a girl on top. We walk around it and look for the wheel at the back, the one that used to pump the water up.

The guild of fishermen had her made in 1862 by László Dunaiszky, for Hal tér, the fish market that lay a little further south along the embankment. The water from this tap was considered the cleanest in Pest, and the city nicknamed the girl Fischer Rézi. When the was built, Hal tér vanished from the map and the fountain moved to the in 1899. There it was torn down in the 1960s to make way for a road and struck from the list of monuments. György Rajna tracked down the broken pieces in a warehouse, Sándor Lovas put them back together, and since 1985 Rézi has stood here, a few hundred metres from where she started.

The Nagy Kristóf house with its giant Saint Christopher, around 1900

The square owes its name to something that now survives only in that name. On the corner with Váci utca, a pharmacy from 1791 had a giant of more than three metres, carved from a single block of stone and transported upright because the sculptor was afraid it would break lying down. The people of Pest named tall men after him. In 1909 the house was levelled and the statue was sawn into three.

This is where the walk ends. We head into Váci utca, and after a minute or two we are back on Vörösmarty tér, where you started this morning or this afternoon.

Map showing Kristóf tér, 1052 Budapest
Kristóf tér, 1052 BudapestBudapest
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Sources. Story: hu.wikipedia (Haláruslány kút) on the commission by the fishermen's guild, the maker Dunaiszky László, the installation on Hal tér in 1862, the move to the Népliget in 1899, the demolition in 1964, the recovery of the fragments by Rajna György and the reinstatement on Kristóf tér in 1985 after restoration by Lovas Sándor; Pestbuda.hu on the funding by the fishing family Fanda and Hal tér as a fish market; MaNDA (Magyar Nemzeti Digitális Archívum) on the location of Hal tér near the present-day Irányi utca and the nickname Fischer Rézi; Köztérkép and Pestbuda.hu on the pharmacy from 1791, the statue by Bauer Mihály from a single block of stone, its upright transport, the nickname for tall men and the demolition of the house in 1909 Photos: Fountain: Dezidor, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Historical photo: Klösz György, Budapest Főváros Levéltára via Fortepan, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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