Labyrinth of Buda Castle

While visiting the Castle Hill of Budapest, I took the opportunity to explore the Labyrinth of Buda Castle. I'm always fascinated by anything ancient that were of significance.

Labyrinth is a complex system of interconnecting cavities or caves. The Labyrinth of Buda Castle is situated in the complex of caves and cellars underneath the Castle Hill. These caves were the refuge and hunting ground for the prehistoric men 500,000 years ago. During the Turk occupation in 16th century, these small caves were transformed into a system of tunnels and cellars. During the World War II, the labyrinth served as a bomb shelter and was large enough to accommodate as many as 10,000 people at a time. That's pretty huge! Today the 4,000 sq.m labyrinth is opened to public and showcases some prehistoric cave paintings, ancient fossil imprints, and a well with flowing red wine among others.


I was already excited reading about this place before the trip. The ticketing counter is beautifully integrated within the labyrinth. It costed us HUF2000 - €7 equivalence - each for admission.


There are several converted cellar halls where function like wedding dinner could be held. The ambiance of the cellars are really impressive.


Here we went. The adventure started from this point onwards.




Firstly, we passed through several chambers where prehistoric cave paintings were found. They resemble very much the prehistoric cave paintings I once saw at Niah Cave in the Borneo island of Malaysia.


The Hun Elevation, which was supposed to commemorate the Hun Empire. I don't know much about the Hun Empire but this pathway certainly look like a passage to the underworld! It's mysterious. ;)




This was a baptismal font where the stored water was used for baptism ceremony of the Magyars. The Danube river was just nearby. Why didn't they just baptise at the river? I have no clue.




Walking through the labyrinth, I smelt wine at one stage even before seeing it. I didn't believe it was real red wine flowing from a well until I saw this notice, 'Red wine is not suitable for consumption'. I was really tempted to taste it and I really regret that I didn't!




This huge dropping Crowned Head is a symbol of the downfall of independent Hungarian Kingdom to the Ottomon military expansion campaign. The Hungarian King was also killed in the battle.




A fossil imprint of human foot was found during one of the reconstruction works and carbon dating indicated that this footprint belongs to a civilisation which was 42,000,000 years ago! This has prompted successful diggings elsewhere around the Buda hill. What is more daunting was that researchers and archeologists discovered that the footprint doesn't originate from the species of Homo Sapien or any of its ancestors. It doesn't belong to our civilisation; it is from an other-world. Conrete anthropological links have yet to be established and scientists have classified this species as Homo Consumus.




The Labyrinth Gallery displays a series of different representations and symbolic images of labyrinths from various ages and culture.






Siew Leng signed the guestbook.

We saw an interesting note left by some tourists - '骗人钱'. Haha. We were laughing at the comments left. After analysing with my Singaporean housemate, we reckon this note was left by Singaporeans simply because of 2 reasons:

i. There was another comment on the same page which stated 'Come to Singapore for A Better One!'
ii. The handwriting of the chinese characters were simply awful - typical of Singaporeans. Mainland Chinese would write much better.

Hehe! I actually think the Labyrinth of Buda Castle is quite a pleasant spot to visit, and rather interesting! :)