The Elephant House
01-05-2008
The Elephant House is one of the most meaningful and well-known historic building at Budapest Zoo. This unique building was restored to its original form, as it was built from 1910-1912 following plans by Hungarian architect Kornél Neuschloss. The building has a mixture of stylistic elements. It includes features of Indian-Islamic Byzantine architecture as well as romantic Hungarian motifs. The cupolas of the Elephant House are covered with turquoise tiles. Its arches are decorated with the famous eosin-glazed majolica. The house is also a kind of shrine, as under the main cupola the statue of the Far-Eastern God Ganesha guards the elephants' dreams. The crowning glory of this spectacular building though is the reconstructed 31 meter heigh tower. It can be seen from far and wide and visitors can climb its winding staircase to a balcony which affords a magnificent view of City Park and the rest of the zoo.
After the monumental reconsruction this building received the European Nostra Award in 2001. Inside the house there are not only indoor exhibits for Asian elephants, other species also live there, like Rock hyraxes, Nile hippopotamuses, Marabu storks and African spurred tortoises. Unfortunately elephants have just not very large outdoor enclosures.
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