Budapest Guide
Várhegy and central Buda
The Hungarian National Gallery
Opening time: Tues– Sun 10am–6pm
Price: 800Ft for permanent displays, 800Ft for visiting shows
Address: Buda Palace, Wings A, B, C and D; main entrance on the eastern side of Wing C, overlooking the river
Telephone: 06-20/4397-326
Website: www.mng.hu
The Hungarian National Gallery (Magyar Nemzeti Galéria) is devoted to Hungarian art from the Middle Ages to the present. It contains much that's superb, but the vastness of the collection and the confusing layout can be fatiguing. Though all the paintings are labelled in English, other details are scanty, so it's worth investing in a guidebook (3500Ft) or guided tour (3200Ft for up to five people; book a couple of days in advance).
The first floor covers the widest range of art and is likely to engage you the longest. It picks up where the ground floor left off in the former Throne Room, where late Gothic altarpieces with soaring pinnacles and carved surrounds are displayed. Most of them come from churches now in Slovakia or Romania, such as the Annunciation altarpiece from Csíkmenaság (now Armaseni in Romania) or the homely St Anne altarpiece from Kisszeben (Sabinov, Slovakia), which looks like a medieval playgroup. Look out for The Visitation by the anonymous "Master MS", in the anteroom, and the coffered ceiling from Gogánváralija (Gogan-Varolea, Romania), in the room behind the Kisszeben Annunciation altarpiece. The remainder of the first floor illustrates other trends in nineteenth-century Hungarian art, namely genre painting, rural romanticism and Impressionism.
The second floor covers twentieth-century Hungarian art up to 1945, starting with the vibrant Art Nouveau movement off to the right of the atrium. On the third floor, Tamás Lossonczy's abstract-surrealistic Cleansing Storm, Béla Kondor's whimsical The Genius of Mechanical Flying and a wire sculpture by Tibor Vilt portraying the awful fate of the peasant rebel leader Dózsa presage the section on Hungarian art since 1945. Exhibits are rotated to showcase the museum's collection of work by modern artists such as Endre Bálint, Attila Szűcs, Sándor Altorjai and Erzsébet Schaár. On fine days, visitors can ascend to the palace's dome for a view of the city.