Hungarian National Museum
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The grand old dame of museums in Hungary’s capital city Budapest. It deserves a mention on this website for its sections about the country’s modern history with its many dark chapters in the 20th century. Though the coverage isn’t particularly in-depth, there are a few remarkable artefacts amongst the exhibits that are worth seeing.
>Combinations with other dark destinations
More background info: For a brief historical overview see under Hungary and Budapest, and for specific aspects of the country’s history see 1914-1922 exhibition (WW1 and its aftermath), Holocaust Memorial Center, Hospital in the Rock & Nuclear Bunker (WWII and Cold War), House of Terror (of both the Nazi and the communist variety), 1956 Memorial and New Municipal Cemetery (for the 1956 uprising and its crushing).
The Hungarian National Museum has its origins in the early 19th century, when the National Parliament passed legislation to turn a recently founded National Library into a museum proper. Donations and state funding came together and the new home of the museum was purpose-built at its present location between 1837 and 1846 in a grand neoclassical style, a speciality of its architect, Mihály Pollack.
After WWII the natural history and ethnographic parts were separated from the museum and moved to new locations (ethnography more than once – see under Budapest); so from then on this National Museum has really been the National History Museum of Hungary. It includes a lot of archaeological artefacts from earliest times and antiquity, plus sections covering modern history. It is the latter in particular that make the museum relevant as a dark-tourism attraction (see concept of dark tourism).
The following text hence concentrates only on those 20th century sections, but this section offers a brief glimpse at the other parts of the museum.
What there is to see: The neoclassical museum building looks more like a faux ancient Greek temple, but inside the whole range of history from before antiquity to almost the present day is covered. It is of course the 20th century parts that are of particular interest from a dark-tourism perspective. If you want to head straight there after purchasing your ticket (and photo permit – see below!), ignore the directions to the beginning of the exhibition that you’ll be given, and instead head straight upstairs to the rear half of the first floor.
The coverage of the modern age begins with a room about the tail end of the Belle Époque soon to be shattered by WW1. The coverage of the Great War in this museum is rather thin and superficial, as is that of the brief communist phase in the early interwar years (for more on that visit the 1914-1922 exhibition in Buda instead!). The coverage of the period up to WWII isn’t all that revealing either.
Things get a bit better (museum-wise!) with the onset of WWII, the Nazi German occupation and the role of Hungary’s own home-bred Nazi organization, the Arrow Cross (cf. House of Terror). A dummy Arrow Cross soldier as well as various Arrow Cross insignia are featured in the exhibits. But their role in the rounding up and murder of Jews in 1944 isn’t exactly elaborated on.
Generally, the museum mostly lets the exhibits speak for themselves. That is: there isn’t much in terms of longer explanatory texts, though displays are also here and there augmented by interactive screens. All texts and labels are all bilingual in Hungarian and English. The translation quality is generally alright, though there are a few strange glitches and stylistically awkward bits. It certainly helps if you come prepared with at least a basic grounding in Hungarian modern history, as the exhibition isn’t overly educational, more just documentary.
The Holocaust only gets a brief mention on the side, where the focus is on the issuing of protection documents by the embassies of e.g. Sweden and Switzerland to save Jews from deportation (cf. Holocaust Memorial Center).
More elaborate is the section of the return of communism, beginning with the liberation of Hungary by the Red Army at the end of WWII and the subsequent installation of a Soviet-loyal communist regime.
On display are various period propaganda posters, a Stalin statue and a grandiosely designed radio receiver specially made for Stalin’s 70th birthday, as a sign explains.
Much more mundane everyday life items are on display too. The Soviet-style campaigns of industrialization and enforced collectivization of agriculture are covered as well.
The aspects of repression and surveillance by the secret security police AVH (for ‘Államvédelmi Hatóság’, Hungarian for “State Protection Authority”) is a topic here too, as are the forced-labour camps to which many thousands of Hungarians were banished in the wave of purges in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
In my view, the best section here is that about the 1956 uprising and revolution under reinstated prime minister Imre Nagy, and the subsequent brutal crushing of the revolt by the Soviets. There are several remarkable artefacts to see, including a specimen of the Hungarian flag with a hole in the middle where the communist symbol was cut out. Such flags became THE symbol of the uprising (cf. 1956 Memorial).
Lying on a bench in a mock prison cell is Imre Nagy’s original dressing gown that he wore in prison after he was deposed and arrested by the Soviets and put on a mock show trial (and sentenced to death). A separate display cabinet has a few personal belongings of Nagy’s, including a pair of his characteristic spectacles.
The museum exhibition continues with coverage of life under communism post-1956, with lots of yet more propaganda posters (in Hungarian, so their exact meaning remains obscure to non-Hungarian-speaking international visitors), communist-era symbols as well as model fighter planes and space vehicles from the Soviet times. There’s a reconstructed living room of the era, as well as displays of household appliances from the time.
Eventually we come to the next revolution, beginning in the late 1980s, including the first cutting open of the Iron Curtain by Hungary in 1989. It was through this opening that GDR citizens then fled to the West during the so-called Pan-European Picnics, which triggered a chain reaction not just in the collapse of the GDR regime but signalling the beginning of the downfall of all the communist regimes in the Eastern Bloc and the subsequent end of the Cold War. A certified piece of cut barbed wire from the Iron Curtain that used to separate Hungary from Austria is on display.
Also on display are various street signs featuring names that were suddenly no longer wanted, such as Marx, Engels and Lenin, but also Hungary’s early Bolshevik “martyr” Béla Kun (who briefly led a Hungarian communist regime after WW1 and was later purged and executed near Moscow in 1938). A toppled sign of the communist party completes the displays about the end of this era.
Covered too is the rehabilitation of Imre Nagy, his reburial and a commemorative ceremony on 23 October 1990 at the plot 301 memorial site in the New Municipal Cemetery.
Finally, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact is covered with the display of the relevant signed document in a glass display cabinet (and one of the pens used for this is in there too). This also ends the museum’s modern history coverage. So there’s nothing about more recent developments such as Hungary joining NATO and the EU, or the rise of Viktor Orbán and the refugee crisis of 2015.
All in all, the museum’s modern history coverage is a bit brief and lacks depth – there’s a dearth of interpretative/explanatory text material – but on the other hand there are several remarkable artefacts and mock-ups that on balance make a visit worth the while. Just don’t expect to really learn much through the museum itself. Instead better do your homework and acquaint yourself with the basics of 20th century Hungarian history before you visit this museum.
Location: Right in the city centre of the Pest side of Budapest, on Múzeum körút between Kálvin tér and Astoria.
Google Maps locator: [47.4912, 19.0626]
Access and costs: easy to get to, not the very cheapest, but OK.
Details: Getting to the museum is easy, either take the metro (lines 3 and 4), tram lines 47, 48, 49 or bus lines 9, 15, or 115 to Kálvin tér, from where it is a short walk up Múzeum krt. The huge neoclassical museum building is impossible to overlook.
Opening times: Tuesday to Sunday, normally from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., but open late to 10 p.m. on Fridays. Closed Mondays.
Admission: 2900 HUF (some concessions apply)
A photography permit costs an extra 1000 HUF – if you do want to take pictures, remember to ask for this permit when you buy your ticket, as they won’t alert you to it. And if you don’t have a permit, the numerous museum wardens in the exhibitions will pounce on you to stop you taking photos!
Time required: not long if you just want to see the 20th century parts – I spent ca. half an hour in those. But if you also want to see the rest of the museum properly you’ll need significantly longer.
Combinations with other dark destinations: Strictly speaking, the rest of the museum falls outside the time bracket relevant for dark tourism (see concept of dark tourism), though you could argue that some of the archaeological displays, with their ancient broken skulls, whole skeletons in graves or that strange elongated (“deliberately malformed”) woman’s skull, do have a certain dark aura to them.
For more proper dark-tourism attractions in the city see under Budapest in general.
Combinations with non-dark destinations: If you’re also open for looking at old history and archaeology, then this museum has plenty more to offer, from prehistory, Roman times, the early Magyars, Ottoman times, etc., etc., all exemplified by a wealth of artefacts like pots, jewellery, clothing, weapons, tools, and whatnot. Personally, I tend to find such “old stuff” a bit tedious, though I admit various items I spotted as I skim-visited these older history parts did have their aesthetic appeal.
At one point a museum warden ushered me into a side section I had intended to skip altogether, but on her insistence went into after all. That way I got to see an exhibit that I admit does have some momentous significance: the grand piano specially made for Ludwig van Beethoven, and later used by Hungary’s musical great Ferenc Liszt (aka Franz Liszt outside Hungary).
For tourist attractions outside the National Museum see under Budapest in general.
