Across the square there is more than monument, there are lessons that every school student comes to learn, the founding stones, or monuments of Buda and Pest. To the left a court and their right a museum, but every town square along the inside waterways has a pile of these stones. There is a stone tower in the middle of this square capped with a figure of the archangel Gabriel. The angel both gaurds and guides the way.

Across the river it is easy to see the democratic vistas of a nation through the arches. No fast food here. No angels. Only arches framing history in the present.

Across the skies the spyres of cathedrals sparkle in the autumn sun. The stone washed clean for a season till the nitrous oxides of European diesel emission allowances take their toll on humans and buildings.

Across the room an organ and a piano await the fingers of Casaba Kiraly. For an hour he played piano and organ and introduced us to history by bringing it into the present, keying a doorway to jazz improvisations and the meditation of raindrops. Each monument time-travelled to our present — a gift of history.