37 of my Favorite Museums In Budapest

Budapest’s hidden treasures: its museums! Their foundations were laid during the golden 19th century, when the Hungarian political leadership wanted to showcase that culturally, too, Budapest could hold its own against Vienna. The state spent massive amounts on art and artifacts, which was complemented by donations from aristocrats and industrialists who felt it was a national cause to advance Budapest’s cultural institutions and to erect monumental homes for them.

I am thinking of the Museum of Agriculture (founded in in 1896), the Museum of Ethnography (1872), the National Museum (1802), the Fine Arts Museum (Szépművészeti; 1896), the Transportation Museum (1899), the Postal Museum (1890). And also the Museum of Applied Arts (1878), which, absurdly, closed in 2017 for renovation works that are yet to begin. Some ambitious collections opened in recent years, such as the House of Music (2022) and the permanent show of the Robert Capa Photography Center (2023); there are also smaller, idiosyncratic museums such as the Zwack Unicum Museum.

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Budapest's public museums are open Tuesday through Sunday, normally from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and closed on Monday. Admission fees are shown below. Unless noted differently, wall texts appear in both Hungarian and English.

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#1 - Museum of Fine Arts / Szépművészeti (location; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Monday; HUF 5,800 admission and there's an annual pass for HUF 9,800): Beside Vienna's Kunsthistorisches, it is the Szépművészeti that holds the most spectacular collection of old masters paintings in Central Europe. Much of it had belonged to the Esterházy family, one of the wealthiest in Austria-Hungary, before the Hungarian state in 1871 purchased thousands of of paintings, prints, and drawings from the financially strapped Prince Miklós Esterházy.

There are works by Fra Angelico, Leonardo, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Dürer, Raphael, Giorgione, Correggio, Titian, Bronzino, Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, El Greco, Velázquez, and Goya. The Dutch and Flemish golden age is also well-represented with Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Rubens, van Dyck, Frans Hals, Jan Steen, Willem Claesz. Heda, Pieter Saenredam, and many others. Here, some of my favorites.

#2 - Parliament Building of Hungary (location; usually 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.; HUF 6,500 admission for EU citizens, otherwise HUF 13,000 which includes a multilingual guide; advance ticket purchase here): People are often surprised by the size of the Hungarian Parliament building. Why does a country with ten million people need such an enormous thing? When this Parliament building was built in the late 19th century, the Hungarian Kingdom was three times its current size and Budapest, together with Vienna, the capital of Austria-Hungary (the coats of arms of all counties that belonged to Hungary appear across the frieze of the building).

This monumental neo-Gothic style was chosen by Gyula Andrássy, the former Prime Minister, who wished that the Hungarian Parliament resemble the Palace of Westminster designed by A.W.N. Pugin and Charles Barry. This, he believed, would lend legitimacy to the Parliament in the eyes of the public. Erected between 1885 and 1904, the building contains 691 rooms, making it the biggest in Hungary. The 45-minute guided tour features Hungary's Holy Crown and the jaw-dropping interior of what used to be the Upper Chamber. Try to book far in advance because the tickets sell out quickly.

#3 - Hungarian National Museum (location; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Monday; HUF 3,500 admission): Founded in 1802, Hungary's oldest museum has a sweeping permanent show about the people who inhabited the Carpathian Basin – Celtic, Roman, German, Hun, Avar, Slavic, Hungarian. The upper floor, across twenty halls, traces the history of Hungary from its tribal beginnings through the Habsburg period to the 1989 fall of Communism. Even if you don't feel like spending a whole day here, the museum’s astonishingly rich collection – with short and informative wall texts – is worth a glimpse (child-friendly, too). A special exhibition on the ground floor displays the Seuso Treasure, fourteen silver vessels from the late-Roman era that were unearthed in Hungary, as well as porcelain from Central Europe.

And there’s the building itself. Designed by Mihály Pollack and built in 1837-1847, it is one of the great examples of Neoclassical architecture in Europe (Pollack was to Budapest what Karl Friedrich Schinkel was to Berlin and Leo von Klenze to Munich). References to ancient Rome abound, including a coffered rotunda imitating the Pantheon – although its oculus is glassed in to protect the artworks.

#4 - Hungarian National Gallery (location; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Monday; HUF 5,400 admission): Located inside the royal palace but fitted in the late-modern style of the 1970s, the National Gallery features Hungary's top artworks from the Middle Ages through the current day. It is here that one can take in oversized Gothic triptychs from northern Hungary; the polished Biedermeier paintings of Miklós Barabás; the post-impressionism of József Rippl-Rónai; the monumental Henri Rousseau-esque works of Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka; the Expressionist portraits of Lajos Tihanyi; the uneasy joy of Margit Anna; the anxious canvases Vilmos Aba-Novák; the haunting sculptures of Tibor Vilt; the pioneering minimalist of Vera Molnár (here, my favorites).

The top floor offers a chance to scan Hungarian artworks from the post-WWII period: Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism, and Concept Art. A word to the wise: the general admission ticket provides access to the museum's panoramic cafe on the terrace and the castle's cupola up top.

#5 - Museum of Ethnography (location; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Monday; HUF 4,900 admission): The Museum of Ethnography – that parabola-shaped building in Budapest’s City Park with a spectacular roof garden – has a brand new and completely astonishing permanent exhibition featuring tens of thousands of folk objects sourced from Hungary and around the world.

Instead of a rigid chronological or geographical split, the museum grouped the objects around themes so it is possible, for example, to compare artifacts from Japan, Indonesia, and Hungary in the same hall. Some of these themes invite visitors to step into the shoes of ethnographers and consider challenging questions. How to decide whether an item is museum-worthy? What to do with mass-produced modern objects, say plastic baskets, that infiltrated peasant life? How about the possessions of people who had to leave the country by force?

The most fascinating section showcases how modern life, starting in the mid-19th century, has made use of folk art. From the compositions of Franz Liszt to the folk dance revivals of the 1970s to contemporary fashion. It’s impossible to take in the exhibition in one go, but you could simply roam the halls and marvel at the striking objects. The bonus is the oversized Budapest model in the vestibule.

#6 - Dohány Street Synagogue & Jewish Museum (location; opening hours vary, closed on Saturday; HUF 13,000 admission includes a guided tour to the synagogue and entry to the Jewish Museum): Before the Holocaust, Budapest was the second biggest Jewish city in Europe after Warsaw with a thriving community of more than 200,000 people that comprised a quarter of the population. In the mid-19th century, the Jewish community had split over differences about assimilation and it is because of this schism that Budapest's Jewish Quarter has three stunning synagogues near one another – Dohány, Rumbach, and Kazinczy. One for each faction.

Commissioned in the 1850s by the progressive Neologs, the Dohány Street Synagogue is the biggest in Europe. The building embodies the search for a Jewish architecture that occupied so many architects at this time: the minaret-like slender towers and Moorish-style color combinations evoke the medieval architecture of Sephardic Jews in the Iberian Peninsula.

The building encloses the Garden of Remembrance, a mass grave for Jews murdered in 1944-1945, and the weeping willow Holocaust memorial. Attached to the synagogue is the Jewish Museum, featuring objects from the lives of Hungarian Jews, including an ornate seder plate made by the renowned Herend Porcelain.

#7 - Ráth György-villa (location; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Monday; HUF 3,600 admission): It is unfortunate that the vast Museum of Applied Arts is currently closed for renovation but in the meantime we can satisfy our cravings for Art Nouveau objects at the villa of Ráth György (1823-1905), the museum’s first director whose old residence functions as a replacement-museum of sorts.

The thematic rooms show off the local variants with works by Émile Gallé, Louis Majorelle, Louis Comfort Tiffany, the Arts and Crafts movement and the Wiener Werkstätte. Inspired by all of the above, the Art Nouveau in Hungary overlapped with the country’s most prosperous period and left behind a rich legacy both in decorative art and Ödön Lechner's architecture.

I’m especially fond of the dining set that the painter József Rippl-Rónai designed for the Count Andrássy family; Zsolnay’s deceptively brilliant glazed ceramics; Jakab Rapoport’s elegant metalworks; and Géza Maróti’s bulky, idiosyncratic furniture.

#8 - Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art (location; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., closed on Monday; HUF 3,000 admission): Budapest's main outlet for contemporary artworks is located along the Danube's bank in southern Budapest. The Ludwig Museum's permanent collection, which is rotated every few years, includes international heavyweights – Picasso, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, David Hockney, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Chuck Close, Vera Molnár – alongside Hungarian artists from the same time. You might want to return for a concert on the other side of the building known for its excellent acoustics.

#9 - Museum of Hungarian Agriculture (location; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed on Monday; HUF 3,000 admission): Hungary was the “breadbasket” of the Habsburg Monarchy, supplying vast quantities of field crops, meat, and wine to the less favorably situated Alpine regions. This exhibition, which is charmingly old-school and very grand, is a tribute to the country’s rich soil and animal life.

But most enjoyable is simply to observe the objects on display. Handmade beehives, wine presses from the 19th century, old bottles of Tokaji, decorated pálinka flasks, native species such as the mangalica, the grey cattle, and the racka sheep, inventive fishing nets, the first threshing machine (1852), hunting trophies of Hungary’s king, Franz Joseph, shot in the Gödöllő woods.

The exhibition halls occupy the fairy-tale-like Vajdahunyad Castle in the City Park. For a small addition fee, you can visit the lookout towers. After each visit, I am intent on immediately moving to the countryside, starting an animal farm and planting grapes for wine. (My commitment is short lived – I love cities.)

#10 - Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center (location; 11 p.m. to 7 p.m., closed on Monday; HUF 4,000 admission): The Capa Center is home to the first permanent exhibition of photography by Endre Friedmann (1913-1954), better known as Robert Capa, the famous photojournalist and war photographer who grew up in Budapest. A rotating set of 140 pieces are displayed, including his pictures from the Spanish Civil War and D-Day.

Beside Capa and Moholy-Nagy, André Kertész (1894-1985) is the best-known Hungarian-born photographer and another highlight of this museum is the rotating selections of Kertész works upstairs. Also here: excellent temporary shows by contemporary artists; the staircase of the Art Nouveau building fitted with gorgeous stained glass windows by József Rippl-Rónai; the joyful café on the ground floor!

#11 - House of Music Hungary (location; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Monday; HUF 4,500 admission): Opened in 2022, the ambitious exhibition of the House of Music charts the evolution of music from its tribal beginnings to the present day. The interactive show takes detours to Hungary's greats such as Franz Liszt, Béla Bartók, and Zoltán Kodály. Each visitor is equipped with high-quality wireless headphones for an immersive musical experience. Keep an eye out for the concerts on the upstairs. The House of Music is located in the City Park, inside a striking building designed by the Japanese star architect, Sou Fujimoto.

#12 - Holocaust Memorial Center (location; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Monday; HUF 3,600 admission):

This museum presents the events leading up to the Holocaust in Hungary – through newsreels, photos, and objects, the exhibition traces the disenfranchisement, expulsion, and murder of half a million Hungarian Jews. Located in District 9, the complex also contains Budapest's second biggest synagogue, a memorial garden with a wall of victims, and a tower listing all Hungarian settlements where Jewish communities have ceased to exist as a result of the deportations (survivors have created new communities in unexpected places).

#13 - Budapest History Museum (location; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Monday; HUF 4,500 admission for combined ticket with the St. Stephen's Hall): In 1967, the Budapest History Museum was the first to move into the former royal palace, decades after the building had been decimated by WWII bombings. The below-ground levels contain the remains of the Gothic-Reinassance halls of the great humanist king of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus, while the top floors present snippets of Budapest’s history from its beginnings to the present day. One can also glimpse the restored Saint Stephen's Hall and consider the well-known dictum that sometimes less is indeed more.

#14 - Kiscelli Museum – Budapest History Museum (location; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Monday; HUF 3,000 admission): Kiscelli is a strong contender for being the quirkiest museum in Budapest. Its origins go back to the 18th century, when Óbuda’s feudal lords, the Count Zichy family, commissioned a pilgrimage church and a monastery on a nearby hilltop inspired by the famous Styrian pilgrimage church of Mariazell (hence Kiscell’s name, which translates to “small [Maria]zell”). The Baroque complex became a victim of the religious reforms of Habsburg emperor Joseph II, who banned the Trinitarian order in 1783 and converted the place into a military hospital and clothing storage.

In 1910, a well-off Austrian furniture maker, Miksa Schmidt, turned the place into his private mansion, also using it to exhibit his company’s furniture. Schmidt, who died in 1935, bequeathed Kiscell to the city of Budapest which is why today the old church grounds are home to Budapest-related museum exhibitions. This is a long-winded way of saying that Kiscelli is an immensely cool and unusual museum.

Although somewhat dated, the permanent show is rich with store signs, topographical city paintings, furniture, and household items, while the garden area is sprinkled with Budapest building-remains. Sometimes the old church nave – now skeletal but still giant and mystical – houses the temporary exhibitions. Go visit!

#15 - Budapest Zoo (location; 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day; HUF 5,500 admission for parents, HUF 3,900 for children): Dating back to 1866, Budapest's City Park is home to one of the oldest zoos in Europe. A visit doubles as a tour of architecture given that elaborate Art Nouveau buildings house many of the animals. Although open year-round, some of them might be hibernating in the winter months, away from the public eye. Economically, the thermal water of the neighboring Széchenyi baths provides much of the zoo's heating.

#16 - House of Terror (location; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Monday; HUF 4,000 admission): Hungary is still suffering the legacy of the four-decades-long Communist regime that reigned until 1989. This museum, inside the building that once headquartered the Communist secret police, explores the brutalities and the sheer idiocy of this period, especially the most repressive Stalinist years of the 1950s (the system meaningfully softened after the Revolution of 1956).

Although audio guides are available and most halls come with an information sheet, I find the presentation somewhat surface-level and too pathos-filled. I recommend that you also visit the Communist-era hall inside the National Museum for more context.

#17 - Money Museum (location; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Tuesday; free admission): The most modern exhibition in all of Budapest, the Money Museum is dedicated to providing a basic understanding of the world of finance through playful touch screens, but there are artifacts: Money as a token of exchange, the concept of inflation, the role of a lender and that of the central bank, for example. Visitors can try to trade stocks or lift a gold bar. The exhibition, which is trilingual, is popular among both children and adults. Free admission.

#18 - Zwack Unicum Museum (location; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed on Sunday; HUF 3,950 admission): Unicum is Hungary's most popular amaro, made from a secret formula containing more than forty types of herbs (an early fan: Joseph II, the enlightened Habsburg emperor). The museum traces the dramatic history of the company's founding Zwack family – persecuted by both the Hungarian Nazi and Communist regimes – and also includes a guided visit to the cellar with a taste. If you like the complex flavor of this royal concoction, you can fuel up on Unicum at the gift shop.

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#19 - Franz Liszt Memorial Museum (location; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Friday, 9-5 on Saturday, closed on Sunday; HUF 3,500 admission): Franz Liszt (1811-1886) was a true cosmopolitan, leading a peripatetic life of constant travel with extended stays in Vienna, Paris, Weimar, Rome, and Budapest. Liszt spent time in Budapest mostly after the 1875 founding of the Royal Academy of Music whose first President and piano teacher he was. He lived in an apartment inside the academy’s first permanent building on Andrássy Avenue.

The piano lessons took place in Liszt’s living room, which opened directly onto the academy’s auditorium. Students remembered Liszt as being strict and direct with his feedback. He didn’t give technical advice and instead of mechanical virtuosity encouraged students to understand the intent and logic of the compositions and try to express them in their own personal way.

Today, Liszt’s old apartment is occupied by the Franz Liszt Memorial Museum, featuring original furniture, musical scores, pianos, and countless memorabilia and portraits. Especially interesting is the silver music stand decorated with the busts of Liszt’s idols – Beethoven, Weber, Schubert – in addition to his own. Note that there are regular classical music concerts in the building known as the "old academy."

#20 - Underground Railway Museum (location; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday to Sunday, closed on Monday; HUF 1,000 admission): The second half of the 19th century brought revolutionary advancements in urban transportation and Budapest was among the first to introduce new forms of transport starting with the Castle Hill funicular (1870), followed by the cog-wheel railway (1874), and the Millennium Underground (1896), all of which are still operational today. The latter was the first underground line on the European continent connecting the city center with the City Park. Today, a museum is dedicated to this charming piece of relic.

The museum occupies an underground tunnel by Deák Ferenc tér where the train originally passed through. The exhibition, which opened in 1975, provides details about the planning, construction, operation, and legacy of the Millennium underground, also featuring original signs, memorial plaques, and three of the cars that were used until well until the 1970s. A quirky and highly recommended museum right in the city center.

#21 - Hungarian Museum of Commerce and Hospitality (location; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Monday; HUF 3,000 admission): An adorable child-friendly museum dedicated to collecting, preserving, and displaying objects related to Hungary's hospitality industry and gastronomic history. The period rooms are fun and educational: Why were Budapest's cafés so important? What did a typical middle-class dining table look like? How about a pantry and a kitchen? What were good table manners? Logos of legendary Hungarian brands and establishments appear throughout, such as those of Unicum, Gerbeaud, Gundel, Kőbányai, and Szerencsi.

#22 - Hungarian House of Photography (Mai Manó House) (location; 12 p.m. to 7 p.m., closed on Monday; HUF 3,600 admission): Nagymező utca has become something of a "photography district" in Budapest since here lies also the Mai Mano House in addition to the Robert Capa Center mentioned above. This quirky building off Andrássy Avenue used to be the studio of Manó Mai, a royal court photographer during Austria-Hungary. Today, temporary-only exhibitions present high-end photography across styles and periods. One should not miss Mai’s studio on the top level and the excellent bookstore on the mezzanine.

#23 - Aquincum Museum (location; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., closed on Monday; HUF 3,000 admission): Founded in 1894, this museum in Óbuda, in northern Budapest, is dedicated to the Roman remains of Budapest. It occupies the grounds of Aquincum, the capital of the Roman Empire's Pannonia Inferior province between the 2nd and the 4th centuries AD (the Romans ruled the western half of today’s Hungary, the region we now call Transdanubia). The exhibitions in both the old and the new museum building provide helpful context and present excavated objects, some recently unearthed. I also like to simply roam the spacious outdoor grounds sprinkled with torsos of long-ago baths, shrines, butcher shops, and markets.

#24 - Semmelweis Museum (location; 12 p.m. to 7 p.m., closed on Monday; HUF 1,400 admission): An impressively rich collection about the history of medicine, from its esoteric beginnings all the way to the scientific discoveries of the 19th century. Some highlights: majolica medicine containers; old masters paintings of Saint Roch, the patron saint of the plague-ridden; one of the first X-ray machines used in Hungary; old dentist’s chairs; a salvaged neoclassical pharmacy interior designed by Mihály Pollack.

There are short profiles on Hungary’s notable doctors, in fact, the museum inhabits the birth-house of professor Ignác Semmelweis (1818-1865), known as the savior of mothers. Semmelweis successfully tackled childbed fever (puerperal fever) by demanding that obstetricians wash their hands before treating patients, a revolutionary idea in the 1850s.

#25 - Goldberger Textile Museum (location; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Monday; HUF 2,000 admission): An informative, interactive, and ultimately heartbreaking exhibition about the Goldberger family’s thriving textile manufacturing business in Óbuda. The presentation follows the company's development from a one-man shop to a vertically integrated conglomerate to which even Hungary's King, Franz Joseph, paid a visit in 1857. Besides the Jewish-Hungarian family's history, visitors can learn about blue-dyeing and roller printing, and try their hand at pattern designs.

#26 - Walter Rózsi Villa – Architecture Museum (location; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Monday and Tuesday; HUF 2,740 admission): Fans of architecture shouldn't miss this jewel of a modern house from 1936 that a critic referred to as Budapest's Villa Tugendhat. The Le Corbusier-inspired gleaming white building raised on pilotis was designed by local architect József Fischer for the opera diva Rózsi Walter and her husband Géza Radó. While the main attraction is the building itself – be sure to view it also from the backyard – the inside contains small rotating exhibitions about modern design and architecture.

#27 - Victor Vasarely Museum (location; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Monday; HUF 2,400 admission): Can you name an internationally famous Hungarian painter? It's not easy. Apart from Mihály Munkácsy, it was the Hungarian-born and educated Victor Vasarely who enjoyed sustained global fame. Vasarely was the founder of the Op Art movement, a form of minimalism in the 1960s and 1970s that relied on optical illusions and spatial tricks. The roots of Vasarely’s works, as the exhibition helpfully explains, go back to the Bauhaus-type Budapest art school he attended before moving to Paris in 1930. The spectacular collection includes 150 selected pieces from across Vasarely's lifetime.

#28 - Kassák Museum (location; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed on Monday and Tuesday; HUF 1,200 admission): The Marcel Duchamp Hungary, Lajos Kassák (1887-1967) was the father of Hungarian modernism – a poet, a writer, a painter, a typographer, and the founder of the activist Ma (Today) art magazine to which Picasso, Moholy-Nagy, and Chagall contributed. The small exhibition, which details Kassák's continuous struggle with the authorities, provides fascinating vignettes about the early phase of the Hungarian avant-garde. The museum is near the Vasarely Museum, see above, so you could conveniently bundle the two.

#29 - Róth Museum (location; 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Monday; HUF 2,000 admission): The Tiffany glass of Hungary, Miksa Róth’s renowned atelier designed and produced the stained glass windows of the country's most famous buildings including the Hungarian Parliament and the Academy of Music. The small museum features sixty impressive works of stained glass and more than a dozen glass mosaics, charting Róth’s evolution from historicism to Art Nouveau and Art Deco.

#30 - Museum of Music History (location; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., closed on Monday; HUF 2,000 admission): Located on the Castle Hill, the Museum of Music History occupies one of the most beautiful Baroque palaces of Budapest whose previous owners included the Count Erdődy and the Baron Hatvany families. The exhibition presents magnificent musical instruments made by Hungarian craftsmen between the 18th and 20th centuries – organ, pedal harp, square piano, and typically Hungarian instruments such as the tárogató and the cimbalom (dulcimers). There’s a memorial room to Sámuel Nemessy, the “Hungarian Stradivarius,” and lots of paintings and medals depicting Liszt, Erkel, Bartók, and Kodály.

#31 - Zoltán Kodály Memorial Museum (location; 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., closed on Tuesday and Sunday; HUF 3,500 admission): Those into music might enjoy a visit to the apartment – right along Andrássy Avenue – where the composer Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967) lived for four decades. Kodály famously recorded folk songs with Bartók in the Hungarian countryside and he’s also known for his folk opera, Háry János, a Missa Brevis, and his passionate teaching activity. The four-bedroom apartment has largely retained its layout and furnishings, complete with original concert posters and personal items. The museum requires advance notice at +36 1 352 7106 or [email protected] before a visit (same day is usually fine).

#32 - Béla Bartók Memorial House (location; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed on Monday; HUF 2,000 admission): This is a small museum a bit away from the center, inside the house where Hungary’s most famous composer, Béla Bartók, lived before he left the increasingly pro-Nazi Hungary in 1940. Unfortunately, Bartók’s inheritor recently decided to remove the original furnishings, but there’s still plenty of bilingual biographical information, photos, music samples, and a short film. And regular concerts. Fans of 1930s modern architecture might want to visit the nearby Napraforgó utca housing estate.

#33 - Hopp Ferenc Museum of East Asian Art (location; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Monday and Tuesday; HUF 2,800 admission): The Musée Cernuschi of Budapest! Ferenc Hopp (1833-1919) was a successful businessman who spent the second half of his long life traveling the world – including five times around it – collecting Chinese, Japanese, and Indian decorative art. Hopp lived in a museum-like villa on Andrássy Avenue whose garden was an extension of his house, strewn with a stone pagoda-shaped lantern, a Chinese moon gate, Buddha statues, and Asian vegetation including bamboos, Japanese maple and cherry trees.

Before his death, Hopp donated to the Hungarian state his entire collection together with the villa, which form the basis of this museum today. A recent addition is the Japanese tea ceremony room complete with sliding doors, tatami floors, and a tokonoma recessed alcove.

#34 - Postal Museum (location; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., closed on Monday and Tuesday; HUF 1,500 admission): For a long time, postal services included more than just delivering letters: the Hungarian Post provided services for telegraphs, phone calls, and even radio broadcasts. Six spacious rooms contain wonderful items, such as postal delivery vehicles, telegraphs, telephone exchanges, mail boxes, money bags, wall-mounted telephones, and postcards. King Franz Joseph’s first telephone is also here (he was wary of new technology and didn’t use it much). The museum inhabits an Art Nouveau building designed by the Viennese architect Oskar Marmorek, with stained glass windows supplied by the renowned Budapest atelier of Miksa Róth.

#35 - Imre Makovecz Center (location; 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., open on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday only; free admission): Apart from the Hungarian-born Marcel Breuer, it is Imre Makovecz (1935-2011) whose name might ring a bell for architecture fans around the world. Makovecz's extravagant organic architecture was inspired by nature and folk culture. His buildings are located mainly in the Hungarian countryside, but the Makovecz Center – inside the residential house he designed for his family – offers a peek into the life of a creative genius. Books are available also in English.

#36 - Postal Stamp Museum (location; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed on Monday; HUF 1,200 admission): This charmingly dated museum just past the Grand Boulevard is a haunt of stamp collectors. By simply browsing the exhibition's half-a-million stamps, which includes the first ever issued in Hungary, visitors can learn about the country's eventful history (both Habsburg emperors and Communist party leaders make appearances). There are stamps from almost every country around the globe. Part of the fun is navigating the pull-out metal-framed glass plates that have been holding the collection since the museum opened in 1938.

#37 - The museums of Szentendre: Apart from its cobble-stoned streets and Mediterranean charm, Szentendre is best known for its artists' colony and array of museums. This adorable town just 45-minutes from Budapest is home to the Ferenczy Museum, the Béla Czóbel Museum, the Vajda Museum, and many others. You can read about those, as well as other activities in my Szentendre guide.