Var-Siklod

Curious how houses often take centre stage in novels: Blandings, Brideshead, Howards End, Lorienburg, Manderley, White Ladies. I hope I can add Var-Siklod to the list.

Count Adam Laczok, in the middle of the eighteenth century, “decided that he must have a residence more worthy of his great position. It was just when the massive elegance of baroque was being transformed in Vienna, Munich and Brandenburg, into the fantasies of rococo; and it was this last that appealed to the taste of Count Adam. First he removed the battlements from the fortified keep and replaced them with a soaring roof of shingle, made in three sections like a pagoda, the first ascending steeply, and the second and third mounting in an elaborate S-bend to form a mushroom-shaped roof that was taller even than the building beneath. He did not enlarge the windows but surrounded them with carved stone cornices decorated with garlands of flowers and fruit. Stone pilasters with elaborate capitals were grafted on to each corner of the building and, over the main entrance, he built out a new doorway, surmounted by vaulting, which in turn supported a balcony whose parapet of carved stone reflected the wildest and most fantastic intricacies of rococo taste. Above the balcony, supported on thin iron poles, was another roof made of copper, separate from that of the main house but also mushroom-shaped in two elaborate and unexpected curves. As the supporting poles were barely visible it seemed as if the heavy shining roof hung in the air unsupported from below. In Count Adam’s time rich curtains had been hung between the iron poles, thus giving him the appearance he wanted, the fashionable Chinese style that had inspired the Pagodenburg at Munich”. (Chapter 2, Volume I, The Transylvanian Trilogy, Miklós Bánffy.)

I doubt Alan the Architect would approve of this most impractical design but, in fiction, castles can be built in the air. The Pagodenburg is a real building; a pavilion in the grounds of Schloss Nymphenburg, a real whopper of a palace, whose inhabitants may socially distance with ease. (Its frontal width is more than 2,000 feet; thanks, Wiki.) I thought I’d had a surfeit of palaces after going to St Petersburg earlier this year but now I yearn to visit Munich. Bavarian castles by day, dodgy modern interpretations of much-loved operas in the evening, and Team Annabel (The A -Team) buying lederhosen, hats adorned with feathers, and reaching for voddy, steins of beer and schnapps chasers. Wouldn’t it be loverly?