ABSTRACT
The Italian writer known as Master Roger, in his account of the Mongol invasion of 1241–1242, described the town of Óbuda 1 as a locus communior (“an easily accessible place”). According to scholarly opinion, the town was considered the administrative center and capital of the Kingdom of Hungary. 2 The collegiate church 3 of Óbuda and the royal palace (later the residence of queens) 4 are important monuments of the Árpádian period which are known not only from written sources but also from archaeological and art historical analysis. Óbuda was certainly a settlement of great importance in the Kingdom of Hungary, but its unprecedented blossoming came to an end in the second half of the twelfth and first third of the thirteenth century. This interruption in the town’s development cannot be attributed solely to the plundering of the Mongol troops in 1241–1242; its development was also very much halted by the foundation of the new settlement of Buda on the hill opposite Pest on royal initiative.
