Budapest Guide
Várhegy and central Buda
The Budapest History Museum
Opening time: Mid-March to mid-Sept daily 10am–6pm; mid-Sept to Oct 10am–6pm; Nov to mid-March daily except Tues 10am–4pm
Price: 1600Ft, audioguide 850Ft
Address: Buda Palace, Wing E
Website: www.btm.hu
The Budapest History Museum (Budapest Történeti Múzeum) covers two millennia of history on three floors, and descends into original vaulted, flagstoned halls from the Renaissance and medieval palaces unearthed during excavations. It's worth starting with prehistory, on the top floor, to find out about the ancient Magyars. Here you can see the artefacts of their nomadic precursors who overran the Pannonian Plain after the Romans left, such as a gold bridle and stirrup fastenings in a zoomorphic style from Avar burial mounds. Owing to the ravages inflicted by the Mongols and the Turks, there's little to show from the time of the Conquest or Hungary's medieval civilization, so most of the second floor is occupied by Budapest in Modern Times, an exhibition giving insight into urban planning, fashions, trade and vices, from 1686 onwards. At either end of the section, two life-sized replicas of the lions on the Lánchíd bracket the period starting with the hopes of the Reform era in the 1840s and ending with the devastated city of 1945. Other items range from an 1880s barrel organ to one of the Swedish Red Cross notices affixed to Jewish safe houses by Wallenberg.
The remains of the medieval palace are reached from the basement via an eighteenth-century cellar spanning two medieval yards on a lower level. A wing of the ground floor of King Sigismund's palace and the cellars beneath the Corvin Library form an intermediate stratum overlaying the cross-vaulted crypt of the Royal Chapel and a Gothic Hall displaying statues from later in the fourteenth century (found in 1974), where lute concerts are held. In another chamber are portions of red marble fireplaces and a massive portal carved with cherubs and flowers from the palace of King Mátyás. Emerging into daylight, bear left and up the stairs to reach another imposing hall, with a view over the castle ramparts.