Maria Theresa was crowned in St Martin's on 25 June 1741, and a few months later, with her lands invaded from three sides, she stood before the diet in Pressburg and asked the Hungarian nobles for an army; they voted her one, in a scene remembered by the Latin words for 'our life and our blood'. Her reign was this city's golden age. The castle was rebuilt as a proper court residence with terraced gardens, palaces and townhouses went up in the streets below, and her son-in-law Albert of Saxe-Teschen governed from the hill and assembled the collection of prints and drawings that became the Albertina in Vienna. By about 1780 roughly 33,000 people lived here — more than in any other town in the Kingdom of Hungary. Almost everything an outsider now admires in the Old Town was built, rebuilt or refaced in these forty years.Máriu Teréziu korunovali v Dóme svätého Martina 25. júna 1741 a o pár mesiacov neskôr, keď na jej krajiny útočili z troch strán, predstúpila pred snem v Prešporku a požiadala uhorskú šľachtu o vojsko; odhlasovala jej ho a výjav sa zapamätal latinskými slovami o „živote a krvi“. Jej panovanie bolo zlatým vekom mesta. Hrad prestavali na skutočné panovnícke sídlo s terasovitými záhradami, v uliciach pod ním vyrástli paláce a meštianske domy a jej zať Albert Sasko-Tešínsky, ktorý odtiaľto spravoval krajinu, zhromaždil zbierku grafiky a kresieb, z ktorej vznikla viedenská Albertina. Okolo roku 1780 tu žilo približne 33 000 ľudí — viac než v ktoromkoľvek inom meste Uhorského kráľovstva. Takmer všetko, čo dnes cudzinec v Starom Meste obdivuje, v týchto štyridsiatich rokoch postavili, prestavali alebo dostalo novú fasádu.
