Location Spotter: Jahn Ferenc Hospital

Photo by By Herzi Pinki via Wiki Commons. (Not Jan Ferenc, but Town Hall in Vienna, Austria)

While the Jahn Ferenc Hospital, or any hospital for that matter, is no place to make casual visit to in these times, in the future there is good reason to have a look in Budapest’s Jahn Ferenc Hospital, as it has the distinction of having one of two actively used paternoster elevators in Hungary.

A paternoster lift, is basically an elevator that features open compartments that run on a continuous loop, meaning the passenger needs to step into and out of the moving contraption, looking like a toy for human sized gerbils. While paternosters have been largely discontinued around the world due to safety reasons, they are greatly sought out by a certain type of steam-punk, or even hipster, traveler. Smithsonian Magazine and Atlas Obscura have both written about paternoster lift tourism. If that’s your thing too, Europe is the place to be. Germany is Europe’s epicentre of paternosters with over 200, with Czech Republic is in second place with 68, Hungary has but two, the second in the city of Miskolc at a university.

According to Wikipedia, “The name paternoster ("Our Father", the first two words of the Lord's Prayer in Latin) was originally applied to the device because the elevator is in the form of a loop and is thus similar to rosary beads used as an aid in reciting prayers.” The first paternoster was built by architect Peter Ellis, in 1868 in Liverpool, England.

While paternosters are still in use, they are being phased out. In Germany, before the general public was barred from riding them, there was an average of one death a year from paternoster accidents. So if you happen to have an accident on the Jahn Ferenc paternoster, count yourself as lucky: you are already in a hospital, and won’t have to travel far for assistance.

GIF via Wikipedia Commons: RokerHRO - A feltöltő saját munkája, CC BY-SA 3.0,

So, while we could go on about the renovated autopsy room the Jahn Ferenc hospital, or the social modernist (we think) design, it’s more ‘uplifting’ shall we say, to focus on the oddity that is the paternoster, and feel lucky Budapest still has a working example of this technological curia.

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