The national story from the Roman period to the end of communism, in the building where the 1848 revolution began.
The museum was founded in 1802 on a private donation and moved into this neoclassical building, by Mihály Pollack, in 1847. A year later its steps became the most famous steps in Hungary.
On 15 March 1848, a crowd gathered outside as the revolution began, and Sándor Petőfi is said to have recited his Nemzeti dal — the National Song — from these steps. Historians think he probably read it elsewhere and the museum version accreted later, but the date is still Hungary’s national holiday and the ceremony still happens here. Some stories are load-bearing whether or not they happened.
The collection
The permanent exhibition runs from the Hungarian conquest through to 1990, in two long chronological sequences. The strongest sections are the medieval and early modern rooms — Ottoman-period objects, the material of a country divided in three — and the twentieth century, which is handled with more directness than you might expect.
The single most important object is the coronation mantle, made in 1031 from Byzantine silk, embroidered by nuns at Veszprém and given by King Stephen and Queen Gisela. Every Hungarian king from the eleventh century onwards was crowned in it. It is displayed in a low-lit case of its own, because at nearly a thousand years old it can take very little light.
Downstairs is a good Roman lapidarium — Pannonia was a frontier province and there is a lot of it under Budapest — and the archaeological material from the conquest period.
Practicalities
The building is large and the labelling is decent in English, though not exhaustive. Photography without flash is generally allowed. There is a garden around the building with statues of writers and a good deal of shade, which is a pleasant place to sit afterwards.
Note that the museum has been part of a broader reorganisation of national collections in recent years and some material moves; check the current layout when you arrive.
More Museums
Museum of Fine Arts
The international collection: a remarkable group of Spanish paintings, a good Egyptian holding, and a hall of plaster casts.
House of Terror
The headquarters of both the fascist and the communist secret police, in the same building, presented as a single continuous horror.
Hospital in the Rock
An emergency hospital and nuclear bunker in the caves under Castle Hill, kept secret until 2002.