Central Market Hall

This guide to Budapest's Central Market Hall starts ten days before its 1896 grand opening, when a fire tore through the roof architect Samu Pecz was racing to finish. It follows the hall through the Siege of Budapest in the winter of 1944-45, then decades of patched-together use under communist rule, up to the day inspectors condemned the ironwork as unsafe in 1991. Look up at the diamond pattern of glazed Zsolnay tile overhead as you listen.