Hungarian Orangeries until the Turn of the 19th Century

Lukas Verlag

Orangeriekultur in Österreich, Ungarn und Tschechien

Orangeriekultur

Schriftenreihe des Arbeitskreises

Orangerien in Deutschland e.V.

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This article aims to serve as the first summa-ry of Hungarian orangeries from the begin-ning of orange cultivation until the dusk of the era of French-influenced garden design. I have been asked to cover the period only until 1800. Nevertheless, I have to point out that this end date is entirely arbitrary as far as orangeries are concerned: no change of any kind is noticeable around this period in or-angery culture. Another decade or two had to pass until new plants found their way to exotic plant collections, namely those from South Africa which just preceded the craze for palms and other – mainly hothouse – plants. The architecture itself also followed old fash-ions in heating and in other technical details which were already known and employed during the 18th century. However, this is the time when the external architecture of or-angeries and other glasshouses changed and were shaped according to the neoclassical taste. This is only true, let me remark again, to the external appearance of these edifices and neoclassicism was not even prevailing; it is enough to think of the 1803 design of the grand orangery of Eisenstadt (now in Austria, then Kismarton in Hungary) which followed baroque traditions. It must be admitted, on the other hand, that formal gardening was also out of fashion by the turn of the centu-ry. From the 1780s onwards the new English fashion was unquestionable and French-in-spired layouts only survived as remnants of an earlier period of garden design. Formal arrangement was restricted to smaller archi-tectural spaces where the English landscape style could not have been implemented.

KRISTÓF FATSAR

HUNGARIAN ORANGERIES UNTIL THE TURN OF THE 19TH CENTURY

Pleasure gardens of Hungary went through a transitional period just like every-where else in Europe. In Hungary this took place from the 1780s until the end of the 18th century and it appears that there were no re-gional differences in this universal process, with a handful of exceptions of the very first pleasure grounds of this obscure mixture of international styles that came into existence around the early 1770s. This also meant that citrus trees were used in the pleasure grounds to embellish the formal layout in front of the façade of urban as well as of country residenc-es. After 1800 potted plants did not seem to enjoy such a prominent role in the ornamen-tal garden although they remained esteemed elements of plant collections. Changes in fashion did not change the position of green-houses within the spatial arrangement: if in anything, conservatories became even more important in garden layouts of the 19th centu-ry, being more readily exposed in the garden than their 17th and 18th century predecessors. But by that time, the cult of oranges had fad-ed overwhelmingly.

Having said enough about the end of or-angeries, let us draw our attention to the dawn of the cult of oranges. Citrus cultivation, or at least the consumption of their fruits, came into fashion pretty much simultaneously with the rest of Europe. The word »orange« has been mentioned in 1481 for the first time in the Hungarian language1 when it was only known as a commercial product, a very expen-sive commodity. The origin of the Hungarian form of the word [narancs] can be traced back to northern Italian connections and it is most

| 61Hungarian Orangeries until the Turn of the 19th Century

probably connected to the Italian orientation of the Hungarian royal court under King Mat-thias Corvinus (1458–90) who was the first monarch north of the Alps to catch up with cultural phenomena of the Renaissance. The first appearance of the Hungarian equivalent of the word lemon [citrom] is from 1538 but this word, similarly to most other European nations but excluding Italy, did not play part in the naming of conservatories. Lemons al-ways played a secondary role in the history of Hungarian orangeries even if they constituted the larger part of most collections than the oranges themselves.

In the following pages I will try to pro-vide an overview of Hungarian orangery culture with respect to both collections and their conservatories. Due to the limitations of space here, I will focus my efforts on gen-eral trends and characteristic changes rather than aiming to give a database of citrus cul-tivation in historic Hungary. Needless to say, I am going to list other plants that formed part of a typical collection. In order to avoid any confusion between collections and their conservatories, to which the original French term orangerie equally refers,2 I am discuss-ing them separately.

Collections of potted plantsThe cultivation of citrus species were not con-nected with their first known appearances in Hungary. The late 15th century mention of the orange refers to the fruit only and not to the plant. In line with the European fashion, the construction of conservatories occurred much later. Nevertheless, collecting oranges became part of the lifestyle of noble courts al-ready in the 16th century because these plants indicated high status and thus played a role in representation which in turn meant that collecting became widespread.

The cultivation of citruses appeared rather early, nearly simultaneously with other Eu-

ropean countries. The first record of orange and lemon trees is based on a misinterpreta-tion of historic sources according to which Baron Tamás Nádasdy (1498–1562), Palatine of Hungary, ordered such plants to his gar-den of Sárvár that was created in 1546. In fact, Nádasdy received nothing more than the fruit, not only then but several times during the 1550s.3 Nevertheless, it would not be surpris-ing if he had been the first person to possess a citrus collection. He was one of the wealthiest and most educated aristocrats of the country what eventually meant that he had a strong western orientation. His regular purchase of citrus fruits does not necessarily imply that he was without a citrus plant collection. By that time, importing oranges and lemons were quite ordinary for a wealthy household, part-ly because the house collection would not be capable of providing enough fruit. The citrus collection was a significant source of joy in itself and also a sign of status;4 its econom-ic profit did not play an important role.

The earliest reliable report on the owner-ship of citrus trees in Hungary is from the very same period. Frakszia Choron already possessed orange trees in 1560 when he had sent one of them over to Kristóf Batthyány as part of a plant exchange.5 Apparently, by the end of the 16th century citrus cultivation was a general phenomenon in aristocratic households. Various citrus species, along with some other non-hardy Mediterranean plants, already show up in the 1590 Latin-Hungarian dictionary by Balázs Szikszai Fabricius.6 The dictionary employed the then usual triple dis-tinction of citruses, namely it separates the or-ange [narancs, Citrus sinensis], the citron [cit-rom, Citrus medica] and the lemon [lemonia, today out of use and replaced also by citrom, Citrus limon]. Francesco Baviera, a relative and diplomat of Pope Clemens VIII (1592–1605), also reported on the cultivation of or-anges and lemons in Transylvania in 1594.7

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Not many records about citrus cultivation have survived from the 16th and not even from the 17th century besides the pure fact that they existed. The most significant information we have is from the court of György Rákóczi I (1593–1648), Prince of Transylvania. Although there are no records of conservatories in the inventory of his possessions, his wife, Zsu-zsanna Lórántffy (ca. 1600–60) was an en-thusiastic cultivator of Mediterranean pot plants. Rákóczi himself, when sending Mi-hály Maurer as his ambassador to the Otto-man Porte, gave orders to Maurer to find a gardener for his court who could deal with so-called Italian trees.8

Plants in conservatories were uniformly called Italian trees as late as the first half of the 19th century. Although the term refers to the Italian origin of these plants, it does not suggest that they were native or not in the Apennine

Peninsula in the first place. The Italian origin in these cases only meant that the most im-portant Mediterranean connections and thus the principal market place for tender plants for Hungary were in Italy, similarly to almost all other countries north of the Alps. The term »Italian garden« could also refer to a collection of pot plants because a more general use of the »Italian tree« could also mean pot plants.

Such an »Italian garden« was one of the highlights of the chef d’oeuvre of Hungarian garden design of the 17th century, the »Gar-den of Pozsony«. It was created by György Lippay, Archbishop of Esztergom (1642–66) and thus Primate of Hungary in Pozsony (modern Bratislava, Slovakia) then tempo-rary capital of the country due to the Otto-man conquest of large parts of the country including the ancient capital of Buda (part of modern Budapest).9 The first reliable Hun-

Kristóf Fatsar

1 The ›Hortus Italicus‹ of the Archbishop’s Garden in Pozsony, engraved by Mauritz Lang based on a drawing by György Lippay, 1663

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garian garden representations also belong to the Archbishop’s garden. They were drawn by his nephew, also called György Lippay, and were etched by Mauritz Lang in Nuremberg in 1663. Only five of the original twenty-odd sheets of a series of engravings survived but luckily enough one of them is the overall view of the garden while another one shows the orangery. (Fig. 1) The plate10 of the con-servatory and the collection of potted plants offers an insight to the term »Italian Garden« by its inscription which reads: »Hortus Ital-icus fructibus Italicis diversis refertus, cum adiuncto conseruatorio«. The phrasing sug-gests that only the outer space full with pot plants constituted the actual Italian garden, whereas the conservatory itself belonged less to the core of the ensemble and served just for storage, playing only an auxiliary role in the life of this part of the garden – at least in the draughtsman’s eyes. Another contem-porary account by one of the court delegates of Saxe-Weimar to Vienna in 1660 describes the cylinder-shaped wooden barrel pots as painted red and bound together with green iron binds, while the smaller clay pots were glazed marble-like with brown, green and multicolour, some of them also ornament-ed with gilded angel-heads. The description gives some of the plant names of the collec-tion such as pomegranates, citrons, lemons, oranges, laurels and agaves.11

The earliest known gardening treatise in Hungarian is also connected to the Archbish-op’s Garden in Pozsony. The three-volume work was written by a younger brother of the Primate, the Jesuit János Lippay (1606–66) under the title »Posoni kert« (»Garden of Pozsony«). Its first volume deals with the flower garden and includes the winter care of tender plants, too.12 Lippay, similarly to Balázs Szikszai Fabricius, lists three different types of citri, namely the orange, the lemon and the citron.13 His interest in the subject is clearly

shown by his intentions to dedicate an entire book to orangeries, but alas this was not to be realised. Lippay’s knowledge about the culti-vation of orange trees was not merely based on his experiences in the Archbishop’s Gar-den; he also relied on theoretical knowledge he had acquired earlier. In the foreword of the »Posoni kert« he refers to the »Hesperides« by Giovanni Battista Ferrari, published in Rome in 1646, as a work on »troubling with foreign trees« which he also used for writing his own treatise. The use of this recent and fundamental work underlines Lippay’s much acclaimed horticultural cognition.

János Lippay already wrote on the care of pot plants two years before his big horticul-tural treatise was published. This other work is an agricultural calendar that covers all fields of husbandry.14 Written in Hungarian it con-sists of practical advises for every month of the year including the horticultural ones; a downside of the work is its reliance on some ancient superstitions, too. Nevertheless, Lip-pay writes about sowing orange seeds and grafting olive trees with a sense that it was well known. In March, for instance, orange seeds should be sown along with the ones of sage, lavender, rosemary, rose, lily, cucum-ber, squash, melon and other garden plants. In another passage he advised to sow orang-es and lemons in March or in April during either waxing or waning phase of the moon. April was also the last month to sow olive and pomegranate seeds. Olives could be al-ready grafted in April, too, but also in May. Pomegranates could be also grafted in April into peach trees. The plants of the orang-eries (»foreign trees such as lemon, orange etc.«) should be put out to the sun around St. George’s day (24th April) and taken back in around St. Martin’s day (11th November).

These short references paved the way to an entire chapter in Lippay’s »Posoni kert« dedicated to the care of plants during winter

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and to passages on numerous tender plants and their cultivation. Lippay gave instruc-tions for the care of plants that were already well known to Hungarians like figs, pome-granates and jujubes. But he was the first to mention Indian fig opuntia, granadilla and other passion flowers. It is not certain how well known these plants were in other Hun-garian collections, but it must be assumed that they were available if Lippay explained their proper cultivation for a general public.15

This is the reason why János Lippay is our most important source for what was cultivat-ed in Hungarian orangeries in the middle of the 17th century. He gives a more reliable in-sight than plant catalogues of individual gar-dens, particularly because there is a serious shortage of the latter. Archival sources might come to light in the future and that would help to understand what plants could truly be found in Hungarian orangeries: the only partially known 1651 plant catalogue of Fer-dinand Heindl’s botanic garden in Pozsony is probably misleading because his very rich collections were unlikely to represent Hun-garian orangeries of that period. Heindl, a Pozsony-based lawyer, inherited his botanical collection from his father, Andreas Heindl, a noted medical doctor and pharmacist, who was so much involved in botany in the late 16th century that he was also known to no lesser person than Carolus Clusius himself. Because of its history and wealth, the Heindl Garden probably belonged to the most sig-nificant of such collections. It is nevertheless impressive that besides Citrus limon, C. auran-tium and perhaps other species and hybrids of the Citrus genus, there were other tender plants in the garden namely Agave america-na, Laurus officinalis, Myrtus communis, Ne-rium oleander, Phoenix dactylifera and Punica granatum – all in the possession of a not par-ticularly wealthy commoner, and the entire list has not even survived.

Hardly any other collection is known from the 17th century despite vague referenc-es to their actual existence, although it can be rightly expected that the numerous sur-viving inventories hide records of tender pot plants. One such inventory mentioned orange and lemon trees among the confiscated pos-sessions of the previously loyally aulic noble-man Zsigmond Holló (?–1685) in the city of Kassa (today Kosice in Slovakia) in 1684.16 Not surprisingly, Holló also had a copy of the »Posoni kert« in his library.

The Archbishop’s Garden in Pozsony and other known gardens of the 17th century were designed according to late Renaissance and Mannerist principles. In the middle of the 17th century Hungary was not ready to follow the newest French garden fashion for several reasons, among which were the traditionally very strong Italian connections; the econom-ical, military and geopolitical situation of the country played also a very important role. Following the unsuccessful siege of Vienna by the Ottomans in 1683 a powerful military campaign had been initiated for the recon-quest of Hungary. Within five years, battles were already fought at the southern borders of the country and by the end of the 17th centu-ry nearly the entire country was reconquered. In consequence, the 18th century proved to be an almost uninterrupted period of increasing wealth for the entire country and particularly for a growing class of aristocracy and clergy. Together with increasing horticultural exper-tise and botanical novelties, modestly devel-oping commerce and peaceful European con-nections, orangery collections kept pace with the grander expressions of residential archi-tecture and other forms of representation.

Orangery collections of the 18th century were ever increasing in specimens and vari-eties and there was a growing number of in-ventories and descriptions to allow a more reliable overview on them. Unfortunately,

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inventories of the most important collections have not been revealed so far, therefore there is only sketchy information about the various citrus trees in the most famous of all Hun-garian orangeries, that of the Királyfa Gar-den (today Král’ová pri Senci in Slovakia) of the Hungarian Palatine, Count János Pálffy (1664–1751).17 The Pálffy Garden of Királyfa belonged to the most highly praised pleasure grounds throughout the 18th century.18 Its or-angery also seems to be the first to have cof-fee shrubs at least as early as the 1730s.19

Plant lists of Hungarian orangeries were more common towards the middle of the cen-tury, but most collections were rather modest in terms of species and specimens. A typical orangery had only one type of lemon and one type of oranges trees, a few other Mediterra-nean trees, plus some tender flowers and herbs. The Lajtakáta (today Gattendorf in Austria) orangery of Count János Károly Ferenc Es-terházy (1723–57) in 1753 had sixteen lemon trees with fruit, fourteen juvenile ones and two more not yet grafted. Six fruitful orange trees and one wild one, five laurels, one myr-tle and eight rosemaries made this collection complete.20 The orangery of the late Provost of Szepesváralja (today Spišské Podhradie in Slovakia), Sándor Máriássy (1689–1755), was surveyed right after his death and found to have contained only two types of citri, too, namely just about twenty big and fruitful citron trees but only four orange trees of the same quality, besides the fifty-odd two or three years old grafted juvenile plants of both types.21 These two collections showed remarkable similarity in the number of cit-rus species and specimens, despite the fact that the Provost had many other species in his collection like cypresses, oleanders, lau-rels, figs, pomegranates, carnations, Spanish brooms, agaves, and a further collection in another glasshouse with jasmines, nutmegs, various aloes and many others.

It appears that lemons or citrons formed the larger parts of collections and only a few orange trees were in an orangery. This phe-nomenon remained true towards the end of the 18th century. At the dissolution of the Camal-dolese Monastery of Majk in 1782 the orang-ery contained nearly fifty lemon trees but only one orange tree, not to mention the almost twenty young lemon plants left to be graft-ed. Besides these, the Camaldoleses only kept twenty-odd flower pots and a similar number of rosemaries in their glasshouse.22 Another inventory from the end of the century was drawn up in 1791 when a new head gardener was hired by Farkas Máriássy (1736–95) in his garden of Márkusfalva (today Markušovce in Slovakia). There were no orange trees there at all but nineteen big lemon trees and over thirty juvenile ones, along with ten Spanish brooms, four figs, fourteen aloes, three Indi-an fig opuntiae (prickly pears) and perhaps other pot plants too.23 The proportion of cit-rons (or lemons, it is almost always difficult to define) and oranges seems to have been the same in the case of larger collections as well, as in the orangery of the Bishop’s Garden in Mocsonok (today Močenok in Slovakia) in 1788, where more than hundred citrons were accompanied by only sixteen orange trees and a handful of other potted tender plants.24

One exception to the simple combination of lemon and orange trees was the orangery of the Bishop’s Garden in Eger where at least six different citri were grown. Upon the death of Count Gábor Antal Erdődy (1684–1744), Bishop of Eger and garden enthusiast, a sur-vey of his orangery was put to paper. Be-cause of his wealth and taste for gardening, it can be justly presumed that his collection was an eminent one. He possessed one and a half dozen pomegranates, well over thirty oleanders, two big and six small cherry lau-rels, four agaves and four yuccas, five jasmines and a hundred other exotic plant juveniles,


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plus eighty carnations and sixty rosemaries. More importantly, he had twelve large citron trees (»Cedronina«, C. medica), another doz-en of a different type of citron trees (»Citri-nus«), fifteen trees of a third type that is the bergamot orange (»sortis Lemoni Pargamuter dictae«, C. bergamia), half a dozen big lemon trees (»Lemos dictae«, C. limon), nine sweet and fifteen bitter oranges (»Pamarancs dict-ae ex Specie dulci«, C. sinensis, and »Ex Spe-cie Subamara«, C. aurantium, respectively). This small but very selective collection was worth 1643 Rhenish guilder and 30 Kreuzer altogether.25

A most enthusiastic and reliable source of orange cultivation is the travel writer Got-tfried Edlen von Rotenstein. He was a keen observer and his records of country houses and city palaces contain exact numbers of many different kinds of house collections including those of the orangeries. He was a native German citizen of Pozsony and when-ever he used the French word orangerie in his descriptions he meant both: that is, conserv-atory and collection, following the original usage of the word.26

Some orangeries he only briefly men-tioned, even those belonging to important family seats like those of Gödöllő Castle of the Counts Grassalkovich or Nagycenk Cas-tle of the Counts Széchényi.27 He probably did not find them significant or interesting. The next level of his appreciation is marked by calling a collection »numerous« (»zahlreiche«) without offering any more detail of a specific orangery like those of the Premonstratensian Monastery of Jászó (today Jasov in Slovakia) or the Esterházy Castle of Kismarton (today Eisenstadt in Austria).28 He gives us insight into some of these collections, however, by noting the highlights without giving full ac-count of the orangery in question.

Among the very fascinating records Roten-stein has given is the force house (»Treibhaus«)

of the Alsókorompa Garden of the Counts Brunswick (today Dolná Krupá in Slovakia) where thirty coffee trees stood, eight of them being 4 ells tall29 and bringing lots of fruit.30 Since these plants were very much depend-ent on warmth, they required a hot house because they could probably not bear fruit in a low-temperature orangery. Undoubtedly, there were also orange trees in Alsókorompa, just like the date palms, banana plants and dragon trees of the Erdődy Garden of Pozsony, or the banana plants, coconut and date palms of the Pálffy Garden, also in Pozsony,31 did not spare the company of citrus trees either despite not being mentioned specifically by Rotenstein. By the end of the 18th century a collection of citrus trees must have had supe-rior quality or immense quantity to be con-sidered worthwhile mentioning.

We can be sure that such collections existed. The already discussed orangery in the Archbishop’s Garden in Pozsony had four-hundred trees, and there were many pineapples and other foreign species there, too.32 Rotenstein observed the largest and thickest-stemmed orange trees in the great orangery of the Darufalva Garden of the Barons Meskó (today Draßburg in Austria).33 The collection of the Jeszenák Garden in Ma-jorháza (today Tomášov in Slovakia) did not stand out with its more than seventy orange and other potted trees, but Rotenstein saw the biggest paddle cacti (Opuntia) here in the country.34 (He also mentioned here the otherwise equally widespread pineapples, but even more interestingly a real curiosity that had captured his eyes: thirty different kinds of squashes were kept in Majorháza in the 1780s.) Rotenstein never wrote about other citrus species than oranges; however, based on the usual plant stock of Hungarian or-angeries discussed above, it is quite certain that he meant all citrus species when he men-tioned oranges.

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According to Rotenstein, the largest and most beautiful garden of Hungary belonged to the already mentioned Királyfa Castle of the Counts Pálffy. Its collection of orange trees could easily be the most significant, too. With its 600 specimens, accompanied by 100 cypresses of 3–4 ells high35, 100 big oleanders and 48 myrtles, not to mention its thousand pineapples and other exotics.36 Regrettably, Rotenstein’s travel writings were confined al-most entirely to the north-western corner of the country, leaving many other collections unnoticed. However, it is here that the most noteworthy gardens and orangeries were to be found, and thus Rotenstein was able to report on the crème of orangery culture of Hunga-ry. Nevertheless, collections like the one at the summer residence of the Archbishops of Kalocsa in Hajós that had consisted of near-ly 240 orange and lemon trees besides plenty of other tender plants in 178437 can only be brought to light with the help of thorough archival research.

There is one more collection Rotenstein does not give full account of although it must have been one of the largest ones, probably only surpassed by the orangery of Királyfa. That is the Eszterháza Orangery, the collec-tion of the summer residence of the Princes Esterházy, which should be mentioned here, too, although it will be discussed in the fol-lowing chapters in more detail due to its oth-er merits. The Eszterháza orangery probably already had an extensive collection when the contents of another Prince Esterházy glass-house in Köpcsény (today Kittsee in Austria) were transported there entirely in 1778.38 The Köpcsény collection had over three hundred orange trees and many other exotics in 1770.39 Rotenstein visited Eszterháza several times be-fore the Köpcsény collection had arrived, but it might be possible that he did so later on, too, thus it is not certain whether he had already seen the added plants in Eszterháza when he

had counted one hundred and sixty-four big orange trees around the garden façade of the main building. The Eszterháza Orangery is still standing, and since it is likely the larg-est one ever built in the country, it probably housed the most extensive collection, too.

It is frustrating, however, that there is hardly any sign of the expansion of citrus varieties in Hungarian gardens towards the end of the 18th century. At the dawn of bo-tanical literature in the Hungarian language, the first work that used Linné’s classification system recorded again only two citrus spe-cies, namely the Citrus medica (»Turkish cit-ron«, the Turkish adjective usually referring to a lesser quality of things – a concept that originates in the hostilities during the Otto-man conquest, to explain it very simply) and the C. aurantium (»orange citron«). But the authors Sámuel Diószegi and Mihály Faze-kas have also mentioned under the entry for citron that this plant produced many differ-ent varieties in the gardens due to cultivation and blending with oranges.40 The authors had both taxonomical expertise and knowledge of courtly gardens of the time. That fact sug-gests that horticultural hybrids must have also been present in Hungarian gardens although there is no proof of them yet.

There is one more plant list that names more citri than the two basic species. It was recorded in 1795 as part of the inventory for the Csákvár Gardens of Count János Ester-házy (1748–1800), and lists all plants consid-ered to belong to an orangery41 that practically meant all exotic species. The list has over fifty entries including pineapples, various cactus and aloe species but also roses and carna-tions to be stored there during winter time. Besides the usual Mediterranean plants like pomegranates, laurels, oleanders, olives, figs, cypresses, Judas trees, French lavenders, there were also more exotic species like nutmeg trees and passion flowers, and even novelties such


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as the Madagascar rosy periwinkle or various pigeonberries. It also lists at least four different citri, namely sweet and bitter oranges (Citrus sinensis and C. aurantium), lemons (C. limon) and »Pomumos« that could likely be identi-fied with pomelo (C. maxima). Again, other citri than lemons were represented by one or two specimens only, but lemons themselves counted more than a hundred. Nevertheless, the list shows a clear shift towards the crea-tion of a more diverse collection.

Just like in Csákvár, citri were losing im-portance in exotic plant collections by the early decades of the 19th century. Several re-cords show that many plants were sold out to local commoners, as from the Count Dessew-ffy gardens in Cserépváralja in 1820.42 Citrus trees remained in glasshouse collections in small numbers but played an unimportant role there losing attention to the newly ar-riving masses of hothouse plants in the 19th century. But due to Hungary’s unfortunate history in 20th century, none of the orangery collections have survived.

Plants of the orangery in the gardenBecause the contents of a conservatory were placed outdoors during the summer months, the display of orangery plants offered an ap-pealing sight for garden visitors. The pots themselves played a part in it, as the detailed description of various containers in the afore-mentioned Archbishop’s Garden of Pozsony proves it very well. In the 17th century glazed clay pots belonged to the beauties of a garden, and Lippay himself directs possible garden patrons to the anabaptist potters who were generally regarded to be the best in this craft. The reputation of clay pots faded towards the 18th century and they became more ordinary, it seems, at least there is no reference to their appearance as time advanced.

Large plants were placed into wooden bar-rels. Based on the few known references, they

followed the usual European fashion being white or green and having two or three iron hoops. The only detailed description of or-ange tree casks is an order for new containers for orange trees at Monbijou, satellite chateau of Eszterháza, in 1784. They were 2 feet wide and 22 inch tall, having three iron hoops and two handles.43 There is no indication of col-ours, but it can be assumed that they were identical with the Eszterháza casks for an ef-fortless exchange of plants between the two collections when needed. Based on a contem-porary painting, the Eszterháza containers were green with white hoops, but the only two hoops visible on the picture are just per-haps an artist’s simplification. (Fig. 2) Smaller plants were planted in simple and undecorat-ed clay pots in the 18th century which were ordered by the hundreds from local potters, at least this is what the numerous records suggest, and there is not any indication that they had aesthetic merits.

János Lippay’ treatise and his nephew’s drawing (Fig. 1) imply that 17th century or-angeries had remained entirely together in a designated spot on the grounds as an »Italian garden« and were not spread to embellish the pleasure grounds. Nevertheless, the »Italian garden« was a place of joy to wander around

2 Orange tree at the corner of the grand parterre in Eszterháza, detail of a painting of Eszterháza by Bartolomeo Gaetano Pesci, around 1780

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the displays of carefully selected and artful-ly arranged plants in their beautiful casks and pots. But due to the lack of other relia-ble records of 17th century orangery displays, there is no ground for further speculations. Although the first half of the 18th century is just as poor in records on garden displays, there is more archival evidence where pot plants were placed around the garden in the second half of that century.

In accordance with European practice, pot plants were distributed in the gardens during the summer to fulfil their ostentatious role, not to mention the ecological needs of these plants, at least from the middle of the 18th century. The most appropriate place would have been a parterre d’orangerie according to the prevailing French canon of garden de-sign, but there are very few records of them in Hungary. Due to the limitation of sourc-es, it is difficult to establish a well-grounded argument on the precise outdoor position of these plants even in the 18th century. However,

it is beneficial to describe the known exam-ples to have some, although perhaps vague, insights on the garden location of Hungari-an citrus collections.

The most numerous proofs of the influence that the cult of oranges exercised on a garden layout belong to the gardens of the Festetics Castle of Keszthely where head architect Kris-tóf Hofstädter drew a series of designs for the castle and its gardens.44 There is no evidence which one of the garden proposals was actu-ally implemented, yet the drawings tell much about Hungarian garden design of the period. The earliest of these is from 1755 and already shows the presence of potted plants in the form of spots one fathom45 apart, indicating the places of stone slabs or some other kind of foundation for the pots around the grass plots in the corners and along the wall of the inner garden.46 (Fig. 3) Based on the num-ber of these spots there were at least 80 spec-imens worthy to place out in the garden. The next drawing in line was made in 1759 and it

3 The plan of the Festetics Castle and its gardens, detail from Kristóf Hofstaedter’s drawing, 1755

4 The plan of the Festetics Castle and its gardens, detail from Kristóf Hofstaedter’s drawing from 1759

5 The plan of the Festetics Castle and its gardens, detail from Kristóf Hofstaedter’s drawing from 1770


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shows a type of parterre d’orangerie in which the designer left a broad, 8 feet wide empty border in between two strips of 3 feet wide plate-bandes des fleurs.47 (Fig. 4) The empty ribbon was almost certainly left for the dis-play of orange trees. The last formal layout for the gardens was drawn in 1770 when the head architect drew a more fashionable design for the parterre d’orangerie.48 (Fig. 5) It actu-ally followed a much earlier orangery display of the Prince Bishop of Bamberg and Elector of Mainz, Lothar Franz von Schönborn, at his private garden of Gaibach, based on its representation by Salomon Kleiner, and pub-lished in 1728.49 The borderless grass rectan-gles were placed immediately behind the back courtyard of the castle, and the pots would have stood at its perimeter. There were only 42 spots for the plants but they could enjoy a more spacious place. The series of designs clearly shows the appreciation for orangery plants in Keszthely that is further emphasised by the key of the last design which refers to the pleasure grounds as the place to show or-ange trees (»… with lawn borders and planted with foreign trees out of the orangery«).50 An-other survey plan of Keszthely Castle simply names the grounds behind the castle as »or-namental and orangery garden«.51

The Keszthely designs follow the basic western European principle that exotic pot plants should be placed in or along grass par-terres. Knowing that, it seems very peculiar that many Hungarian gardens combined the parterre d’orangerie with the parterre de fleurs, which meant that orange trees were placed in the flower parterres. The finest examples of these are the chamber gardens of Eszter-háza (modern Fertőd, Hungary) where the sunken gardens were embellished with rec-tangular platte-band isolées of flowers, broken at the middle of the sides to allow walking across the borders. (Fig. 6) Inside the borders orange trees were placed during the summer

season. However, Rotenstein’s description contradicts with this official garden plan of 1784. According to him, each of the cham-ber gardens had eight flower baskets of green painted iron, and they were accompanied by 48 orange trees on each side.52 In either case, the sunken chamber gardens of Eszterháza were combinations of flower arrangements and orange trees.

Another method of combining flower gardens with orange trees followed the same approach as the classic French concept of the parterre d’orangerie with the exeption that the core field of the parterre is com-posed of flower beds and compartments in-stead of lawn. Caspar Kollmann, gardener of the Archbishop’s Garden of Pozsony, de-signed such a parterre in 1750 for the already mentioned Széchényi Garden at Nagycenk

6 One of the two chamber gardens of Eszterháza, detail of the plan of Eszterháza by Nicolas Jacoby, 1784

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but his design was not executed. (Fig. 7) He placed this mixed parterre in an inferior po-sition compared to the other parterres of the garden, although he also proposed to place orange tree pots in the corners of the other parterres, too. He probably knew the collec-tions of Nagycenk because he assumed the requirements to place more than eighty or-ange trees in the gardens.53

Other examples include the Grassalkovich Garden of Pozsonyivánka (today Ivánka pri Dunaji in Slovakia) where the key of the gar-den plan declares that an enclosed garden space is an »orange garden with flower beds«.54 Based on the map it seems that triangular flower beds were surrounded by borders of or-ange trees. (Fig. 8) Adjacent to this enclosure the kitchen garden was laid out with a newly built large glasshouse where the orange trees

must have been kept around 1780 when the plan was drawn. According to Rotenstein, the orange collection of the already mentioned Erdődy Garden of Pozsony was also placed in the flower garden55 which probably again refers to this type of arrangement.

The pots were not necessarily arranged densely in a specific parterre but could be placed as one of the ornaments of a parterre, along with statues or vases. It must be noted though that spectacularly large and mature trees had to be selected to be worthy of being aligned with artistic objects. Many orange trees were placed out in this way at the corners of the grand parterre of Eszterháza. (Figs. 2, 9). The grass parterre of the Grassalkovich Gar-den in Pozsony was adorned with statues and flower baskets but pots of cypress and oleander trees stood there as well.56 It seems that be-

7 Design for the pleasure grounds of the Széchényi Castle of Nagycenk, detail from the 1750 drawing by Caspar Koll-mann, 1750

8 The Grassalkovich Castle of Pozsonyivánka and its gardens, the glasshouse (›z‹) is in the upper right corner with four square compartments of the kitchen garden, on the other side of the kitchen garden four triangular shaped beds constitute the orangery garden (›y‹), detail of a garden plan, around 1780


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sides the already described orangery garden of the Pozsonyivánka Garden of the Counts Grassalkovich, the large grass parterre there was also adorned with flowers and ninety-four orange trees.57 Rotenstein’s language suggests that these two Grassalkovich gardens had a very similar arrangement to that of Eszterháza. We can surmise that the Eszterháza grand parterre was not a unique example but per-haps represented a not uncommon Hungar-ian parterre type although an extraordinary rich one, especially considering the sheer size of the parterre in Eszterháza.

Plants of the orangery were also used outside of or at least not directly attached to the gardens. They were considered similar to architectural ornaments when placed in a manner to emphasise architectural features. Orange trees articulated the pilasters of the Eszterháza Castle in the years around 1780 as evidenced both by a contemporary painting (Fig. 9) and by Rotenstein who counted six-ty-eight of them standing around the castle.58 It is quite possible that Rotenstein saw these very same orange trees earlier in Köpcsény in 1770, before being transported to Eszterháza

in 1778, because he recorded three hundred of them standing along the high walls of the cour d’ honneur of Köpcsény Castle. The court itself was adorned with »Indian« plants and big agaves all around, and even further away in the garden there was a temporary installa-tion involving date and perhaps also coconut palms and banana plants. All this ephemeral arrangement saluted Empress Maria Theresa (1740–80), Emperor Joseph II (1765–90) and the entire imperial court who were so gra-cious as to pay a visit to the grateful Prince Nicolas Esterházy (1714–90).59 His immense wealth helped the Prince to be a legendarily generous host and it is very pleasing for gar-den historians that he has used the contents of his conservatories in the service of showing magnificence to his most illustrious guests.

ConservatoriesThere is no information on early conserva-tories in Hungary. It must be assumed that tender plants were stored in cellars or heated vaults during winter time just like elsewhere in Europe. In the middle of the 17th century this practice was most common as János Lip-

9 Orange trees standing at the pilasters of Eszterháza Castle, detail of a painting of Eszterháza by Bartolomeo Gaetano Pesci, around 1780

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pay explained it in his treatise.60 Some plants could also have been planted out like figs and Spanish brooms, but they needed extra care by being planked around, covered first with horse manure then with soil.

However, Lippay also described the nec-essary features of such cellars and heated vaults as he instructed on proper insulation, watering the plants, moisture level of the soil in the pots, ventilation, temperature, open-ing towards the south and so forth. In fact, these sheds were somewhat similar to more advanced glasshouses. He also noted that great lords had the means to build wooden houses to protect their plants; particularly those planted out in front of the south side of a high wall, and these plank-houses were dis-mantled when the cold weather was over.

The Archbishop György Lippay had tried several ways to help his orangery survive the winter, and János Lippay described the build-ing that succeeded. The conservatory of the Archbishop’s Garden of Pozsony had a two fathom deep ditch walled around with stone, the house above it had a high back wall, the front wall was just above the ground, and a wooden structure was built on them. The doors were on the sides, three windows were in the front, and two externally heated ov-ens gave warmth to the plants. (The illus-tration of the conservatory seems to show a prettier structure than this explanation, see Fig. 1) The smaller plants in clay pots stood on racks along the walls of the ditch while larger casks were placed on planks in the middle of that space.

Lippay described the essence of creating and maintaining conservatories and his tone suggests that he knew these kinds of edifices not only from the Archbishop’s Garden. He often referred to widespread customs and methods, although he naturally gave detailed account of the Pozsony conservatory only. It is most interesting that Lippay did not pro-

vide an Hungarian name for the conservatory; he referred to these edifices as »such houses« where tender plants are cared for during win-ter. Nevertheless, it can be sensed from his text that the wintering method in the Arch-bishop’s Garden was well above the usual standards of the country where plants were overwhelmingly stored in cellars and in oth-er inner spaces not specifically designed for the purpose. Surprisingly, this early method survived well into the 18th century. As late as in 1726 lateral vaults of the coach house in the Castle of Bajmóc (today Bojnice in Slovakia) were used to store flowers during winter time.61

Conservatories specifically erected to house orange trees were normally and simply called glasshouses in Hungary.62 Baron Káro-ly Dujardin’s possessions in Érsekújvár (today Nové Zámky in Slovakia) at the beginning of the 18th century included a »very beautiful building for the Italian trees that is orangery, ordinarily called glasshouse«.63 A peculiar ex-ample of an unnamed bishop’s garden calls the conservatory »orange house« with a mixed orthography of the German and Hungarian languages (»Pomerancsen-Haus«).64 Such a building sometimes could be also called »flow-er house«.65 The 1763 garden plan of Edelény Castle lists a glasshouse, a force house but also a »tree house« (Baum Haus) that could hardly be anything else than a building for »Italian trees«. Interestingly, the 1820 inventory gave the name »plant house« (GewächsHaus) to the former glasshouse there, because a larger or-angery had been built in the meantime and the other two buildings had disappeared.66 Sources often mention tender plants in places where there is no hint of ornamental gardens otherwise, therefore some kinds of winter stor-age edifices must have been very common in the country.

When French style baroque gardens came to fashion in Hungary in the first decades of


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the 18th century, conservatories of oranger-ies became the most important buildings in pleasure gardens. They were often designed with architectural creativity and executed with careful craftsmanship but the majority of them were built using universally known conventional glasshouse types. Archive ma-terials of individual gardens almost always mention some kind of glasshouse on site, al-though it is usually ambiguous what kind of qualities the building actually had. There are only a few relevant contemporary descrip-tions on the appearance of conservatories. Rotenstein mentioned only the orangery of Királyfa as an edifice satisfying the require-ments of courtly architecture. According to him, the splendid and grand glasshouse was ornamented with statues and vases there. This glasshouse must have been the orangery it-self because he mentioned four other force houses, too, which probably played subor-dinate roles.67

There are somewhat more ample archival sources to help us understand the quality of 18th century Hungarian conservatories. Plenty of designs, building contracts or inventories refer to the existence of such buildings. As it might be well expected, sources came to light from the better preserved and organ-ised archives of important families, whose orange cult was already introduced by the texts of Rotenstein. It is not entirely known how widespread it was in the lower levels of society to keep pot plants. However, just as there are records of 17th century orange cul-tivation in bourgeois households like the one of Ferdinand Heindl in 1651, there are a few records about them from the 18th century as well. Glasshouses nevertheless were relatively modest buildings even in the majority of the more significant gardens.

The design for the glasshouse of the Royal Gardens of Pozsony Castle in 1778 was not executed but the proposed building is a very

characteristic example.68 (Fig. 10) A particu-lar detail on the drawing of the glasshouse is the cross section with the system of gradual-ly elevating shelves. The door opened at one side of the building with an externally fed stove attached to the back wall standing by it. Only the back wall and the footings were to be of masonry work, the rest of the struc-ture was planned to be of carpentry work with the usual backward leaning and five bay wide main façade.

The glasshouse of the Csáky Castle of Sze-pesmindszent (today Bijacovce in Slovakia) was designed following a similar fashion in the 1780s, representing the general idea about the functionality of these buildings that lacks the aspiration to involve them in the archi-tectural expression of the owner’s status and rather rates them as one of the outer buildings. The Szepesmindszent glasshouse was built to-gether with the force house and the gardener’s abode.69 On the other hand, the design fol-lowed the hierarchical scheme of these build-ings because the glasshouse was placed in the middle of the otherwise relatively unattrac-tive ensemble. The inner rooms, following the recommendations of various treatises, open towards each other. This simple set of serres was not unique and this traditional techni-cal setting and design survived well into the 19th century as for instance the glazed com-

10 Design for the glasshouse in the Royal Gardens of Pozsony by Mathias Höllrigel, 1778

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plex of Répceszentgyörgy from 1817 proves it, although without the gardener’s quarters but with an additional unit. (Fig. 11) A large part of this orangery is still standing although in a substantially altered form.

Due to the mostly wooden structure of most Hungarian orangeries and other glass-houses, only very few of them have survived. The precondition of survival is having ma-sonry work superstructure, apparently; no glasshouse remained without massive stone or brick walls. But the vast majority of those with a massive structure also vanished in-cluding much later built architecture of the 19th or 20th century, too. The oldest still ex-isting orangeries are from the second half of the 18th century; none of the earlier ones have survived.

The orangery of the Pécel Castle of the Ráday family is one of the few remaining ex-amples. The five bay wide building had two transitional chambers at both ends. (Fig. 12) It was designed by one of the Mayerhoffers, a

leading mason master family of Pest, around 1755 but was not constructed until around the late 1760s. The fine building of the orangery was soon transformed to a picture gallery and therefore its openings were turned to niches in the wall in order to protect the paintings from direct sunlight. (Fig. 13)

Naturally, the largest of all Hungarian orangeries of masonry work was built in Esz-terháza in 1774–75. It was transformed to a granary sometime in the 19th century and has been neglected for several decades after World War II. (Fig. 14) Its ruinous condition was made worse when contractors started to work on it without letting surveyors record the architecture and therefore most of the ar-chaeological evidence was destroyed in 2012. As the owner of the building is the state mon-ument trust of the country, this negligence is even more shameful.

The orangery of the Esterházy Gardens of Csákvár was constructed in the 1780s and its collection was already discussed. It has been

11 The serres of János Szentgyörgyi Horváth in Répceszentgyörgy, 1817


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13 The orangery of the Ráday Castle of Pécel, Photo: K. Fatsar, 2003

12 Ráday Castle of Pécel and its garden with orangery and pavilion by Andreas or Johann Mayerhoffer, around 1755

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14 The Eszterháza orangery as a granary, Photo: K. Fatsar, 2003

15 The Csákvár orangery as a stable, Photo: K. Fatsar, 2007


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later being used for animal husbandry, and already in the early 19th century a Swiss dairy was placed there. (Fig. 15) It is quite obvious that the original building must have had more openings on its main façade but there is currently no plan to undertake any kind of survey or archaeology on the building.

These latter introduced three conservato-ries were entirely of masonry work and there-fore could be easily given another function which secured their survival. The earlier men-tioned Répceszentgyörgy glasshouse was se-verely modified in the later 19th century with further walling and cast iron structure and thus could retain its original function. The Jászó orangery, on the other hand, has presum-ably reserved most of its original 18th century form with large wooden parts in its structure and despite this weakness of vulnerability it is still in a very good condition. (Fig. 16)

The glasshouse of the Premonstratensian Monastery of Jászó also excels in importance in the architectural ensemble of the monastery. In very few cases only, the orangery played such an eminent role in the spatial arrange-ment.70 In Jászó the glasshouse stood as the

counterpart of the Abbot’s wing, facing one another with the pleasure garden in between them. But the orangery of the Ráday Castle in Pécel stood in an even more prominent po-sition. It faced the side line of the garden but at its full length, the castle garden at Pécel be-ing placed perpendicularly to one of the side wings of the residence. (Fig. 12) It also meant that the main façade of the orangery is paral-lel to that of the castle but pushed back not to rival with the residence. There is only vague information concerning the actual layout of the grounds but since the garden was domi-nated by the orangery it can be conceived as a chamber garden or an orangery display. It should not be forgotten that this was the only pleasure garden of the castle, thus it must have amalgamated various garden types.

As far as the position of other glasshouses is concerned, the already discussed examples suggest that most of them did not belong to the attractions of the pleasure grounds. Most of them stood in a separate garden that was either dedicated to flower beds or in most cas-es to the kitchen garden. This was the case in Pozsonyivánka, Edelény, Csákvár and even in

16 The orangery of the Premonstratensian Monastery of Jászó, Photo: K. Fatsar, 2009

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Eszterháza. In some gardens it stood in the main garden but did not enjoy a very favour-able position as in Kismarton where it was placed off centre at the termination point of one of the lateral wildernesses, or in Keszt-hely where it stood along the pleasure gar-den, although not in a distinguished spot.

The orangery of the Batthyány Castle of Körmend was given the most prominent position possible: it was part of the gateway that opened in the main axis of the castle it-self and faced north where the state highway runs nowadays.71 On both sides of the grand gate, the back walls of the orangery stretched along with its handsome neoclassical facade. The southern sides of the architecture facing the garden were created as orangeries from 1799 onwards.

The construction of the Körmend orang-ery stretched into the 19th century when the

cultivation of citri was not the main activity of greenhouse gardeners. The words related to orange cultivation were still alive in the Hungarian language as late as the end of that century, dictionaries defined both meanings of ›orangery‹ as well as expressions such as ›orange gardener‹, ›orange house‹ or ›orange garden‹. These words and expressions had vanished from the Hungarian language by the middle of the 20th century, to the extent that they now sound very odd. Their mean-ings can be probably understood but doubt-fully in a precise way. The restoration of the remaining few 18th century glasshouses and the rebuilding of collections would certainly help but there are no signs for such desire in Hungarian society. One can only hope that the impressive development of scholarship on orangeries in Germany will sooner or lat-er have affect on Hungary too.


Notes1 On linguistic issues I am going to rely on Éva

Vörös’s historical-etymological dictionary of the Hungarian names of exotic fruits (Éva Vörös: Egzotikus gyümölcsök magyar neveinek történeti-etimológiai szótára, Debrecen, Kossuth Egyetemi Kiadó, 1996) if not stated otherwise. It covers many names of plants kept in Hungarian orangeries.

2 Sylvia Saudan-Skira; Michel Saudan: Orangeries: Palaces of glass – their history and development, Köln, 1998, p. 12.

3 György Komoróczy: Nádasdi Tamás és a XVI. századi magyar nagybirtok gazdálkodása, Bu-dapest, [s. n.], 1932 and Bernát Kumorovicz L.; Erzsébet M. Kállai: Kultúrtörténeti szemelvények a Nádasdiak 1540–1550-es számadásaiból, Buda-pest, 1959, p. 34ff.

4 Claudia Gröschel: Dekoration und Herrschaftsze-ichen. Orangeriepf lanzen als Motiv in der höfischen Kunst, in: Orangerien in Europa Von fürstlichem Vermögen und gärtnerischer Kunst, München, 2007, pp. 7–12, p. 7.

5 Sándor Takáts: Magyar nagyasszonyok, Budapest, [1926], pp. 266–267.

6 Amongst trees: »Ficus – Füge fa, Laurus – Boros-tian fa, Medicum malum – Citrum, Mal9 punica

– Narancz fa, Olea – Olay fa, Palma – Palma fa«, among fruits: »Ficus – Fige, Malum medicum

– Citrom, Mala aurantia – Narancz, Mala limo-nia – Lemonia, Oliua – Olai gyümölcz, Palmula, Dactili – Palma gyümölcz« János Melich: Szikszai Fabricius Balázs latin-magyar szójegyzéke 1590-ből, Budapest, Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1906.

7 Szabolcs Barlay Ö.: Egy 16. századi olasz tudósítás Erdélyről, Magyar Könyvszemle 92, 1976, 3, pp. 265–270, p. 267.

8 Raymund Rapaics: Magyar kertek, Budapest, [1940], pp. 75–76.

9 The most recent overview of the Archbishop’s Garden in the 17th century is by Géza Galavics: A magyarországi kertek képzőművészeti ábrázolásai. I. rész. 17. század, in: Géza Galavics (ed.): Történeti kertek. Kertművészet és műemlékvédelem, Buda-pest, 2000, pp. 167–198. The part about the said garden is on pages 168–178. The later history of the garden with retrospective clarifications on the 17th century state of the layout is by Kristóf Fatsar:

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Magyarországi barokk kertművészet, Budapest, 2008, pp. 188–193.

10 The engraving was first analysed by János Stirling in his article: Lippay György pozsonyi kertjének egy eddig ismeretlen ábrázolása 1663-ból, in: A Kertészeti Egyetem Közleményei XLVIII (1984), Budapest, 1986, pp. 327–337.

11 »… führete uns der Gärtner zu dem Quartier, darein aus den Einsatz, (also wird das Winter- oder Pomerantzen-Haus genennet,) die Italiänische Bäume und Gewächse gesetzet werden, und waren allerhand tragende Bäume von Granaten, Citronen, Limonien, Pomerantzen, Lorbeern, etc. in Kübeln, derer an der Zahl 167. und meistens roth, alle mit grün gefärbten eisernen Reiffen. Ferner stunden auf denen Revieren 780. allerhand Gattung gebrandte groß und kleine Töpfe, auf Marmor-arth braun, grün, bund etc. von Wieder-täuffern verglasurt, auch etliche mit übergülten Engels-Köpfen, so zwar die Wiedertäuffer, so viel die Bilder betrifft, ungerne machen. Unter andern seltenen Gewächsen was Aloe, mit langen spitzigen auf der Seiten stachlichten fetten Blät-tern, wohl anderthalbe Ellen hoch, so alle 7. Jahr eine eintzige Blume tragen soll, die Blätter legen die Türckische Weiber in das Wasser, und lassen es verfaulen, hernach würcken sie aus den über-bleibenden subtilen Fäßigen zu den Türckischen Bunden die Leinwad.« See Johann Joachim Müller: Entdecktes Staats-Cabinet, Jena 1714, pp. 124–125. The visit took place on Thursday, April 8 of 1660, according to the Gregorian calendar.

12 János Lippay: Posoni kert, Nagyszombat, 1664, pp. 128–135.

13 Lippay, 1664 (see note 12), p.133.14 János Lippay: Calendarium oeconimicum per-

petuum, Nagyszombat, 1662.15 Compare to the plant list given by Clemens

Alexander Wimmer: Die Pflanzenbestände der Orangerien, in: Der Süden in Norden. Orang-erien – ein fürstliches Vergnügen, Regensburg, 1999, 14–19.

16 National Archives of Hungary, E 156 (Urbaria et Conscriptiones), Fasciculus 68, Numerus 59.

17 Matthias Bel: Notitia Hungariae novae historico geographica, Tomus 2, Vienna, 1736, p. 224.

18 Fatsar, 2008 (see note 9), pp. 137–138.19 The plant only started to appear in European

conservatories in the 1710s. Heike Palm; Hubert Rettich: Georg Ernst Tatters Exemplar von Vol-kamers »Nürnbergische Hesperides«, in: Nürn-bergische Hesperiden und Orangeriekultur in Franken, Schriftenreihe des Arbeitskreises Oran-gerien in Deutschland e. V., Band 7, Petersberg, 2011, pp. 46–85, pp. 52–55.

20 National Archives of Hungary, P 1289 (Zólyom branch of the Esterházy family), I. 9.


22 Kristóf Fatsar: Az oroszlány-majkpusztai egy-kori kamalduli remeteség kertjeinek története, in: Kristóf Fatsar (ed.): Kalászat: Kerttörténeti tanulmányok Baloghné Ormos Ilona 70. szüle-tésnapjára,Budapest, 2012, pp. 23–46, p. 42.

23 Ödön Máriássy: Szemelvények Máriássy Farkas magánlevéltárából, Közlemények Szepes várme-gye múltjából, VI., 1914, pp. 167–171, pp. 170–171.


25 National Archives of Hungary, E 205 (Acta cameralia), 18. cs., f. 251.

26 This double meaning is explained by German publications too, see Franciscus Philippus Florini [Franz Philipp Florin]: Oeconomus prudens et legalis, Nürnberg/Frankfurt/Leipzig, 1751, Vol II, p. 948.

27 [Gottfried Edler von Rotenstein], G. E. v. R. Rei-sen durch einen Theil des Königreichs Ungarn, im 1763sten und folgenden Jahren. Erster Abschnitt, in: Johann Bernoulli: Sammlung kurzer Reise-beschreibungen und anderer zur Erweiterung der Länder und Menschkenntniß dienenter Nachrich-ten, Jahrgang 1783, 9. Band, Berlin/Leipzig, 1783, pp. 235–298, p. 249 and p. 289.

28 Rotenstein, 1783 (see note 27), Band 9, p. 247 and p. 292.

29 Undoubtedly referring to Austrian ell, the height of these plants equals 3,14 m.

30 Rotenstein, 1783 (see note 27), Band 9, p. 243.31 [Gottfried Edler von Rotenstein], G. E. v. R. Rei-

sen durch einen Theil des Königreichs Ungarn, im 1763 und folgenden Jahren. Zweyter Abschnitt, in: Johann Bernoulli: Sammlung kurzer Reise-beschreibungen und anderer zur Erweiterung der Länder und Menschkenntniß dienenter Nachrich-ten, Jahrgang 1783, 10. Band, Berlin/Leipzig, 1783, pp. 185–226, pp. 194–195 and p. 198.

32 Rotenstein, 1783 (see note 31), Band 10, p. 191.33 Rotenstein, 1783 (see note 27), Band 9, p. 291.34 [Gottfried Edler von Rotenstein]: Des Herrn

Gottfried Edlen von Rotenstein Beschreibung der Insel Schütt in Ungarn 1784, in: Johann Bernoulli: Sammlung kurzer Reisebeschreibun-gen und anderer zur Erweiterung der Länder und Menschkenntniß dienenter Nachrichten, Jahrgang 1784, 15. Band, Berlin/Leipzig, 1784, pp. 159–178, p. 167.

35 Again, Austrian ell was used by Rotenstein, making the height of these trees 2,35–3,14 m.

36 Rotenstein, 1783 (see note 31), Band 10, pp. 210–211.

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38 National Archives of Hungary, P 154 (Ducal branch of the Esterházy family – Regents’ reports), 37. bundle.

39 Rotenstein, 1783 (see note 27), Band 9, pp. 296–298.40 »Ennek a’ mivelés és a’ Narantstsal való öszsze-

párosítás által igen sokféle fajtái lettek a’ kertek-benn.« Sámuel Diószegi and Mihály Fazekas: Magyar Fűvész Könyv, Debreczen, 1807, p. 484.

41 »Specification / Aller Indianisch- und Bottanisch Gewächsen mit in begriff der Orangerie, welche sich in Herrschaftl. Kuchlgarten … befinden, …«, National Archives of Hungary, P 189 (Csákvár branch of the Esterházy family – Accounts), Vol. 70, p. 94, No. 124.

42 National Archives of Hungary, P 93 (Dessewffy family archives – Accounts), Series I, No. 2.

43 The dimensions of the casks were given in Viennese measure that makes them 63 cm wide and 58 cm tall. National Archives of Hungary, P 115 (Ducal branch of the Esterházy family – Records of 18th and 19th century family members), 4. bundle.

44 The most comprehensive history of the Festetics Gardens of Keszthely in English is by Gábor Alföldy: A brief history of Festetics Park at Kes-zthely, in: Gábor Alföldy (ed.): Principal Gardens of Hungary, Budapest, 2001, pp. 103–117. The 18th century gardens were further analysed by Fatsar, 2008 (see note 9), pp. 132–137.

45 One Viennese fathom (»Wiener Klafter«) is 1,9 m.46 National Archives of Hungary, T 3 (Drawings of

the Festetics family archive), No. 4.47 National Archives of Hungary, T 3 (Drawings of

the Festetics family archive), No. 5.48 National Archives of Hungary, T 3 (Drawings of

the Festetics family archive), No. 40/1–3.49 The square parter behind these rectangular grass

plots further proves that Kleiner’s engravings were the source for the 1770 design because Hofstädter’s drawing faithfully follows the layout of another quarter of Gaibach (that formerly of the summer pavilion) too, although the central basin was never implemented as it appears on Kleiner’s version. Werner Wenzel: Die Gärten des Lothar Franz von Schönborn, 1655–1729, Berlin, 1970, pp. 69 and 81.

50 The original text reads »… Zier Garden, mit Waassen Bordörs und aus der Orangerie mit frembten Baumen verseze.«

51 »Zier und Orangerie Garten«, National Archives of Hungary, T 3 (Drawings of the Festetics family archive), No. 291.

52 Rotenstein, 1783 (see note 27), Band 9, p. 274.53 National Archives of Hungary, S 83 (Plans of

the Széchenyi family archive), No. 1, analysed by Fatsar 2008, 161–165.

54 In the original key: »Daß Oranschen Gartel, mit blumen bäthen.« Once in the Grassalkovich family archive, the garden plan had been destroyed, see Fatsar, 2008 (see note 9), pp. 198–199.

55 »Die Orangerie ist im kleinen Blumengarten, …«, Rotenstein, 1783 (see note 31), Band 10, p. 194.

56 Rotenstein, 1783 (see note 31), Band 10, p. 196.57 »… bey dem Schlosse ein großes Wasenparterr mit

Blumen und 94 Orangebäumen besetzt, darunter 24 große auserlesen Stücke sind; …«, Rotenstein, 1783 (see note 31), Band 10, p. 225.

58 Rotenstein, 1783 (see note 27), Band 9, pp. 274–275.59 Rotenstein, 1783 (see note 27), Band 9, p. 296 and

p. 298.60 Lippay, 1664 (see note 12), pp. 129–131.61 National Archives of Hungary, E 156 (Urbaria et

Conscriptiones), Fasciculus 97, Numerus 1.62 Joannes Baptist Grossinger: Universa Historia

Physica Regni Hungariae secundum Tria Regna Naturae digesta. Tomus V. Regni vegetabilis, Pars I. Dendrologia, sive Historia Arborum, & Fruticum Hungariae, Posonii, 1797, p. 69.

63 »seu orangeria vulgo gloshaus«, National Archives of Hungary, E 156 (Urbaria et Conscriptiones), Fasciculus 156, Numerus 61.

64 Fatsar, 2008 (see note 9). 65 »… pro conservatore florum et arborum Ital-

icorum« in Keczerpeklény (today Kecerovské Pekl’any in Slovakia) in 1756, National Archives of Hungary, E 156 (Urbaria et Conscriptiones), Fasciculus 112, Numerus 28, also Fatsar, 2008 (see note 9), p. 130.

66 Fatsar, 2008 (see note 9), pp. 98–100.67 Rotenstein, 1783 (see note 31), Band 10, p. 211.68 Kristóf Fatsar: Albert herceg rezidenciája: A po-

zsonyi királyi vár és kertjei a 18. század második felében, Művészettörténeti Értesítő, L. (2001) 1–2, pp. 125–132. The reproduction of the glasshouse is Fig. 3, description and notes are on p. 128 and on p. 131, respectively.

69 Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Familienarchiv Csáky, Fasc. CXX-VII, No. 59.

70 On the disposition of the orangery in the garden see Simone Balsam: Die Stellung der Orangerien in den Gärten und der Einfluß der Stellung auf ihre Architektur, in: Arbeitskreis »Orangerien«: Tagungsbericht 2, Potsdam, 1996, pp. 87–101.

71 Erika Erdélyi; András Koppány: A körmendi Batthyány-kastély Narancsházának kutatása, in: Zoltán Nagy (ed.): A Batthyányiak évszázadai: Tudományos konferencia Körmenden, 2005, ok-tóber 27–29, Körmend, 2006, pp. 399–408.


Hungarian Orangeries until the Turn of the 19th Century

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Transcript of Hungarian Orangeries until the Turn of the 19th Century