Vidék a városban. Kertek és majorságok a középkori Budán
The Countryside in the City: Gardens and Manors in Medieval Buda

Summary/Abstract: The study discusses a topic often neglected by urban history: urban gardens and manors. These green areas within the city were probably of a great significance in their time, since intramural gardens constituted nearly half of all the urban territory and their produce provided the city’s population with basic subsistence. In order to explore medieval urban gardens in Buda, the paper uses references found in available charter evidence and historiographical sources, complemented by garden walls documented in archaeological record. The research yielded various categories of gardens within the internal and external boundaries of Buda, which all played different roles in the city’s economy.The sources about urban gardens within the castrum are scarce, which is understandable since the high-density coverage of built-up areas probably did not leave much room for them. There is evidence, however, for gardens belonging to residential buildings, which were potentially extramural extensions, either attached to the main plot or situated completely separately. In the suburbium, the increasingly steep hillside closer to the castle walls was less suitable for residential purposes, so burghers planted orchards and manors in Taschental and Tótfalu quarters situated in the area at the foot of the castle. There were also gardens, farms, and manors in the wider surroundings of the city, which provided food for the burghers. Surviving evidence also shows the presence of vegetable gardens (solarium), orchards (pomarium), herb gardens (herbarium), and ornamental or flower gardens (viridarium) among the monastic gardens of Buda. Medieval landscaping standards and customs were for the most part modelled after antique traditions.

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