Ganz Mausoleum

The Ganz Mausoleum is a large-sized tomb in the Fiumei út cemetery in Budapest.

History

The Swiss-born Ganz Ábrahám, the father of Hungarian railway wheel manufacturing, ended his life by his own hand in tragic circumstances in 1867. His wife, Ganz Jozefina, turned to the city of Pest in 1868 to purchase a monumental burial site for her husband. After the city provided this, the widow bought a burial plot in the southwest corner of the Fiumei út cemetery, then commissioned Miklós Ybl, who had previously designed a riverside rental house for the family, to create the mausoleum design. Ybl designed a domed, Neo-Renaissance style tomb, whose upper part features a chapel with a bust of Ganz Ábrahám, while its lower part—accessible by an internal staircase—is occupied by a crypt with stone sarcophagi. The construction works carried out in 1868–1869 (according to other sources in 1872) were supervised by master builder Lajos Hofhauser. The building consumed 50,000 forints in contemporary value. In 1913 the widow was also laid to rest here.

The mausoleum was renovated between 1991 and 1996, and has been under monument protection since 1997. The National Heritage Institute prepared a separate booklet to promote wider knowledge of the tomb (Ganz Mausoleum. NÖRI booklets 7., National Heritage Institute, Budapest, 2019). The interior of the Ganz Mausoleum is generally kept locked and is not open to visitors.