Non-karstic Caves of the Budai Mountains
The 260 km2 Budai Mountain range forms the easternmost part of the Trans-Danubien Mountains along the River Danube. The central area is made up of denudated fault blocks interspersed with some smaller itermontane basins. The southern area of the mountains is a low elevated terraced plateau, the Tétényi Plateau.
The geological and tectonical composition of the Budai Mountains varies. It is mainly composed of limestones and dolomites. This is one of the most important karst cave areas of Hungary. There are about 150 caves, some of them several km long. These caves originated mainly through thermalkarstic effects. Caves have not developed in the few occurring sandstone deposits.
Only a few non karstic caves occur. The most interesting is the Calc-tufa Cave system in the Castle Hill of Buda. The system was formed on the boundary of the Eocene marl and the Pleistocene calc-tufa as result of syngenetic cavity development during calc-tufa deposition, dissolution, erosion and artificial intervention. Today it is very difficult to separate the natural, the artificially widened and completly artificial tunnel sections of the 4 km long cave system. We consider a tenth of the system to be naturalnon-karstic cave.
Between 1851 and 53 on Mount Gellért, quarrying opened, and, after a short time, demolished a calc-tufa cave. In the southern area of Mount Gellért lies the Szent István Cave Chapel. Above this chapel there is a small non-karstic cave, formed in marl.
South of Solymár limestone quarrying has opened several minor karst caves. In one of the quarries, a smaller basalt intrusion has been revealed. Here a cave, the so called Budaligeti Basalt Cave, crosses the intrusion.
Furthermore, we have noted 14 artificial caves to the North of Budaörs and near Makkosmária. These hollows were dug in marl, in order to excavate basic material for the production of paint. This raw materialis the result of thermal water weathering the marl.
The "Nádor-üreg" near Nagykovácsi village inthe slope of the Mount Nándor is also an artificial cavity.
The total length of the non-karstic caves in the Budai Moutainsis approximately 460 m.