Hungarian National Museum: The Steps of 15 March
Why is it significant?
Walk through the gate into the garden and stop at the foot of the wide steps. Above you rises a portico of tall Corinthian columns and a triangular pediment crowded with figures, the most solemn neoclassical front in Budapest.
Key Facts
| Place | Hungarian National Museum: The Steps of 15 March |
|---|---|
| Address | Múzeum körút 14-16, 1088 Budapest, Hungary |
| Geo Coordinates | 47.49120, 19.06290 |
| Part of Walk | Coffee, Cake & Paprika: A Budapest Food Walk from Gerbeaud to the Great Market Hall |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk through the gate into the garden and stop at the foot of the wide steps. Above you rises a portico of tall Corinthian columns and a triangular pediment crowded with figures, the most solemn neoclassical front in Budapest. This is the Hungarian National Museum, and every 15 March this garden fills with people wearing red, white and green cockades.
The museum began in 1802, when Count Ferenc Széchényi gave his collection of books, manuscripts, coins and maps to the nation. This building, designed by Mihály Pollack, went up between 1837 and 1847. When it opened, Pest was still a small provincial town, and a palace like this, built for the nation's memory rather than for a king, was a declaration in stone.
On the afternoon of 15 March 1848, after the morning at the Pilvax and the printing press, a huge crowd gathered here in the rain. Speeches were made and the twelve demands were read out. Legend says that Petőfi recited the National Song from these very steps... historians are not sure he did, but the image is so strong that the steps have become the stage of the revolution anyway. From here the crowd went on across the river to free a political prisoner, the writer Mihály Táncsics.
Inside, the collections range from the coronation mantle of the first Hungarian kings to a piano that belonged to Beethoven, which later passed to Franz Liszt and which Liszt gave to the museum. And notice the coffee thread of this walk: the revolution was planned over coffee, printed with ink, and proclaimed in a garden.
Every year on 15 March the crowd comes back, and so do the politicians, and the speeches from these steps say a great deal about the Hungary of the moment. Now walk back out to the ring road and a few steps south to Kálvin tér, the square with the church that looks like a Greek temple.