In our first set of episodes this season I made the claim, as we were putting Saint István to rest, that with the founder of the medieval Hungarian kingdom being buried at Székesfehérvár, the city would become the burial place of the Árpádians. But careful listeners might have noticed that during the first century, not many of them choose to be buried there. King András went to the abbey at Tihany that he founded, and László had his self-driving wagon Uber him all the way to Nagyvárad (Oreda on modern maps).

This all changes with King Kálmán at the beginning of the 12th century. Kálmán was about ten years old when István and his son, Prince Imre were canonized as saints. It left an obvious, grand impression on the future king, likely amplified by the fact that he was pushed towards an ecclesiastic career early on.

It is Kálmán who requests to be buried next to Saint István’s remains in the Basilica of Our Lady, at Székesfehérvár. This causes an obvious, albeit not immediate shift in the burial customs of the Árpádians – this desire for the saintly founder’s proximity will cause many to seek burial in the same place. All in all, fourteen rulers would choose this same place as their burial ground.

The Basilica of Our Lady (Nagyboldogasszony in Hungarian) was, sadly, destroyed in the 18th century. In the 16th century, the Ottoman occupiers would strip the royal graves of all their riches, but its destruction began with the city’s recovery by Christian forces, then subsequent re-occupation by the Ottomans. The Basilica did not survive these sieges in good condition. Today, one can visit the site of the ruins, as you can see the site below.