Richard Halverstadt: February 20, 2011: St. Stephen's Church (revisit)

Sunday, February 20, 2011

February 20, 2011: St. Stephen's Church (revisit)

February 20, 2011: Now that I've learned how to use my camera a bit more, I decided to revisit St. Stephen's Church to get some better pictures of the inside. As a reminder, here's a picture of St. Stephen's from my blog entry of August 15, 2010.

St. Stephen's Church

The plans for building St. Stephen's were completed in 1845 but actual construction didn't begin until 1851 and continued until 1889. In 1861 part of the church collapsed due to the poor building materials that were being used (so they speculate). When reconstruction began in 1875, the plans were altered to increase the size of the dome. Finally in 1889 the dome was completed and the first mass was held in the church in 1905, sixty years after beginning on the task. As you can see from the pictures, the church is immense and pictures really don't do its size justice.

St. Stephen's Church

Behind the front altar is a room devoted to a special monument that contains the actual hand of St. Stephen.

Room with St. Stephen's right hand

Monument containing St. Stephen's right hand

St. Stephen died on August 15, 1038 and was canonized August 15, 1083 (coincidence that my first visit to the church was August 15, 2010!). His right hand was recovered intact and was first stored in Transylvania. From there it moved to Dubrovnik, then Vienna, Austria, then Buda, then to the west in 1944. The hand was finally returned to Hungary in 1945 and is now in St. Stephen's Church.

A short walk from St. Stephen's Church is the Bank of Hungary. This building is one of the buildings on Freedom Square. The following pictures show a different perspective than the ones I had taken previously.