The secrets of Jókai Street
A Lutonian Abroad discovers inmates, crown jewels and Silvershark in Veszprém’s forgotten street
Jókai Mór utca (Jókai street) in Veszprém, seen from above on the castle walls.
Veszprém was the first bishopric of Hungary dating back to around 1000 AD and played an important part in bringing Christianity and nationhood to Hungary. It became known as the City of Queens as the medieval tradition was that the consorts of the Hungarian monarchs were crowned and buried in Veszprém. Built on seven hills, locals say of the city that at any given time, the bells are ringing or the wind is blowing. Pedestrians in narrow Jókai Mór utca may hear a call to prayer from the many churches above. Despite the city’s breezy reputation, history feels trapped in the still air under the castle walls where this sliver of the medieval city can be found.
Its earlier name was Hosszú utca (long street) and it was probably longer in the past. In a car you now pass the three hundred remaining metres of Jókai street with hardly a change of gear. It once connected the city’s former open-air markets. One near the bridge, one in the old town square above. For centuries it was the main commercial and arterial road of Veszprém. Now this shady, twisting route offers only local connections. Quite often the pavements are empty of passers-by let alone tourists, yet this is one of the city’s most interesting thoroughfares. Much has happened here. A Lutonian Abroad explores its older and more recent history.
Above the upper end of the street, the old county prison was built into the side of the castle hill and broods over the valley. Renovated with Funding from the 2023 European City of Culture award, it is now a tourist attraction focusing on the lives of the inmates. Access is gained from a glass-fronted lift ascending from the stylish Ruttner House. An early twentieth century retail outlet for spices and seeds, it has also been refurbished after many years of neglect, providing a café and hostel accommodation directly below the prison. As with most of the buildings on this side of the street, the view from any inward facing windows is onto the limestone cliff of the castle.
The city of culture initiative belatedly installed a hollow metal figure waving up towards the cells. Hollow, so as not to distract passing motorists on this bendy route. It portrays what often happened while the prison was open. Born locally, my wife remembers shouted conversations between the inmates and their distraught relatives outside. Their lonely voices echoing around the otherwise silent little valley, while she waited at the bus stop on the way to primary school.
The Ruttner House before renovation.
Figure depicting friends and relatives waving up to inmates in Veszprém prison. The renovated Rutner House can just be seen in the left of the picture
Inside the renovated Ruttner House
The original entrance to the prison was from the main castle street above and the facade there offers a gateway more befitting a palace than a jail. The mostly eighteenth-century buildings in the Castle district are largely owned by the Catholic Church and offer much insight into the ‘City of Queens’ from a royal and religious perspective. Little is told of Veszprém’s broader social or political history. Like the fact that the castle changed hands eleven times during the Turkish wars before finally being lost to the Ottoman invaders.
Amongst the churches, palaces and cathedral, there is no reference to the thriving medieval life that occurred down in Jókai street. There were tailors, glaziers, ropemakers, butchers, watchmakers, potters, bookbinders and cloth dyers. Over time the trades in Jókai street were superseded and by the twentieth century, poorer residents occupied the ancient buildings. With the change of system and then the City of Culture initiative, some gentrification has occurred. Many buildings have been spruced up with a coat of paint and some new houses built to replace those that had become too derelict. Along with two hairdressers and a motor mechanic’s workshop, tourist accommodation is offered in buildings that once housed the artisans.
High water mark of flood in 1803
Jókai street twists and turns more than is required by the contours of the enclosing hills. It is shaped by an underground stream that was once much larger than that now culverted beneath the tarmac. A feint sign on a wall shows the highwater mark of a flood in 1803. An initial conclusion is that this was caused by the Séd brook bursting its banks lower down at the end of the street. Instead, locals believe that the lost and nameless stream was actually responsible for the high water. A Lutonian Abroad took the trouble to look under the road bridge and sure enough, a culvert with a trickle of water coming down from the hill to join the Séd could be seen.
Veszprém’s first baroque statue, a depiction of St John of Nepomuk can be found nearby, located in the archway of a residential property. Amongst other attributes he is the patron saint of flooding and calamities. While his statue’s location is said to mark the boundary of the chapter and bishop’s quarters, it may be that its presence also reflected the risk of high water in the area. Perhaps his invocation was aimed at keeping local residents dry of foot?
Statue of St John of Nepomuk
The lower end of the street is dominated by modern buildings facing onto the castle walls. High fences protect insignificant looking structures that make up the Command-and-Control Centre of the Hungarian Air Force and also constitute an important NATO centre known as Silvershark. How safe its presence makes the citizens of Veszprém feel, is up for debate. Fortunately, its services have yet to be called upon in any way that has been recorded in the history books.
NATO troops currently based in the city maintain a low profile. American personnel located here can sometimes be encountered in Budapest during their leave periods. Two years ago, a US tattoo artist acquaintance, fellow student of Hungarian, mentioned to me a steady flow of bored military personnel, finding their way from Veszprém to her door, pleased to encounter a fellow citizen willing to inject them with ink. Long may the peace dividend see them underemployed and bored in Veszprém!
Hungarian Airforce and Silvershark NATO base with the ‘Rock’ behind containing a WW2 bunker.
Built into the side of the ‘Rock’ behind the complex is a large bunker with an interesting past. It was originally built for the Hungarian National Bank (HNB) and considered the safest place in the country. As the Second World War reached its climax, the Hungarian army transferred the Crown Jewels from Budapest to the bunker, away from Nazi and Communist invaders. Kept there between 6th November and 6th December 1944, before beginning their safe passage through Europe to America, they were returned to the Hungarian state by President Jimmy Carter in 1978. Two plaques on the side of the military base in Jókai street record the safe keeping of the Crown Jewels in Veszprém.
Less well known is that the HNB also transferred the entire national gold reserve (30 tonnes) to the bunker in November 1944. By 10th December the Russian forces were perilously close and the reserve was moved by train to Austria, where it was initially hidden in the vault of a monastery, before eventually finding the protection of the US army in Germany and safely returned to Hungary in 1946. Unlike the crown jewels, there is no record outside the air force base of the gold’s wartime presence in the city.
The bunker has several underground levels, covering six thousand square metres, in which four thousand people can take shelter if necessary. During the Second World War, several departments of the local hospital were relocated here, including the maternity unit. Local Veszprém residents enjoyed a secure but somewhat gloomy birth there in early 1945.
Plaque outside air force base commemorating the Crown Jewels of Hungary hidden here in 1944
Growing up locally my wife passed through Jókai street daily and despite the gentrification, it still has a melancholic and impoverished feel to her. I couldn’t imagine living here and would feel intimidated by the castle walls; concerned about what is going on behind the fences of the military compound and inside the ‘Rock.’ The area reminds me of 1960’s films when mad scientists often held the world to ransom with devilish technology. The reality is somewhat different but no less scary considering the state of politics today
Jókai Mór utca- a street of hidden secrets
A lot has happened and is happening in the easily overlooked Jókai Mór utca. It reminds me of seemingly insignificant places in the UK where the past also casts its spell into the present: Those abandoned hat factory entrances in Luton where you can imagine the straw plaits piled up waiting to be worked on, the ancient walls of Colchester Park where Roman soldiers surely walked past on a pleasant summers evening, or the closed shop front on Margate seafront, paintwork bleached clear of the wording by centuries of sea air, where Turner may have stocked up on supplies. These examples come to my mind but history lurks everywhere. Sometimes we need to explore what is on the doorstep and remind ourselves of all our yesterdays.