The skull now identified as Béla of Macsó
Borbély Noémi/Tamás Hajdu et al. 2025
More than 700 years ago, a Hungarian duke was murdered in a brutal and very bloody head-on attack in a convent. Now, researchers studying an ancient skeleton excavated in Budapest have confirmed it belonged to the duke and revealed shocking details of his assassination.
“There were so many more serious injuries than would be necessary to kill somebody,” says Martin Trautmann at the University of Helsinki in Finland.
Archaeologists uncovered the man’s remains — which had been buried in dismembered pieces in the convent floor — during a 1915 excavation of a Dominican convent on Margaret Island, in the middle of the river Danube in Budapest. At the time, the researchers suspected it might be the body of 29-year-old Béla of Macsó, the grandson of King Béla IV, who had built the convent.
