---
title: "Budapest's Palace District"
chunk: 3/5
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest's_Palace_District"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T16:01:32.329935+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Schools in the district include the Széchenyi School of Trade on Vas utca, the Eötvös Loránd University Trefort Ágoston teacher-practicing High School on Trefort utca, and three on Horánszky utca – the Benda Kálmán Arts and Social Sciences College (part of the Károli Gáspár University); the Vörösmarty Mihály Gimnázium the Saint Ignatius Jesuit College. The main church in the district is the mainly neo-Romanesque Jézus Szíve templom (Church of the Sacred Heart), on Lőrinc pap tér, which was built 1880–1890 to the designs of József Kauser. Kauser also completed the spectacular interior of the Basilica after Miklós Ybl died in 1891 and designed the south-eastern quarter of the Kódály körönd, the magnificent quartet of residential palaces on Andrássy út between Oktogon and Heroes’ Square. The area around the Jézus Szíve templom has long been known as the ‘little Vatican’ for its numerous institutions connected with the Catholic Church. These include the Jézus Szíve Jezsuita lélkeszség (the Society of Jesus Convent) at Mária utca 25, the Kollégium Teréziánum of the Miasszonyunkról Nevezett Kalocsai Iskolanővérek Társulata (Terezianum College (student dormitory) of the Society of Our Lady Sisters of Kalocsa School at Mária utca 20 and several in Horánszky utca: the Saint Ignatius Jesuit College mentioned above (18); the Divine Saviour's Sisters Saint Anna College (Isteni Megváltóról Nevezett Nővérek Szent Anna Collégiuma)(17); the 1912 Párbeszédháza, the House of Dialogue, the Jesuits' spiritual and cultural centre in Budapest(20) (handed after the communist regime's dissolution of the Jesuit order to the Karl Marx University; ‘the ruined building was returned to the Jesuit order and the order had the building renovated by its hundredth anniversary’); and the Jézus Szíve társasága egyetemi szakkkolegiumá (during World War II the Jézus Szive Népleanyok Társasága (Sacred Heart Society of Folkgirls) was at this address) (14). These institutions played a heroic role in helping persecuted Jews after the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944. The sisters of the Saint Anna College gave refuge to Jewish girls while the Sacred Heart Society of Folkgirls issued protective documents. The convent in Mária utca hid Jewish men, while the House of Dialogue, according to the plaque outside, ‘hid almost forty deserters and 120 Jews away in the basement and then helped them escape abroad.’
The 1877 Rabbinical Seminary and Budapest University of Jewish Studies on Gutenberg tér (Országos Rabbiképző – Zsidó Egyetem and Alapítvány a Zsidó Egyetemért) is the world's oldest institution where rabbis graduate. It also contains a synagogue. Its construction was financed by the Emperor and King Franz Joseph, and was originally named after him. (He visited it a month after its opening in November 1877). After the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944, the rabbinical institute was seized by the SS and turned into a prison. Adolf Eichmann used it as a base to organise the deportation of Hungarian Jews, mainly to Auschwitz. According to the Wikipedia article on the institute, an important part of its library was seized by the Nazis. ‘3000 books were dispatched to Prague, where Eichmann planned the construction of a "Museum of an extinct race" in the former Jewish quarter. Only in the 1980s were the books discovered in the cellar of the Jewish Museum of Prague and brought back to Budapest in 1989. ‘The library remains a source of pride for the university. It is considered one of the most important collections of Jewish theological literature outside Israel.’ During the communist period, the rabbinical seminary in Budapest, uniquely in Eastern Europe, continued to operate, attracting students from across the region, including the Soviet Union. In addition to the main cultural institutions in the Palace District – the National Museum and the Szabó Ervin Library – the Uránia Cinema, at Rákóczy út 21, is also noteworthy. Designed by Henrik Schmahl in a hybrid Venetian Gothic-Moorish style, it opened in the mid-1890s initially as a cabaret theatre. Restored in 2002 to its original glory, four years later the Uránia was awarded the European Union's heritage protection prize, Europa Nostra, for outstanding restoration.