Budapest museums · History
History · since 1909
Jewish Museum
Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives
original name: Magyar Zsidó Múzeum és Levéltár
Few Jewish museums of Central Europe came through the war, and this is the one whose things were gathered by a community for itself, where Prague’s were assembled by the Germans out of plunder. The difference is audible in what is here: a great deal of domestic silver from middling congregations and few showpieces. In size it yields to Prague and to Warsaw. The synagogue next door is not covered by the same ticket: separate door, separate charge.
Minimum route
45–90 minutes
Founded
1909
What to see
Ritual silver and textiles from Hungarian congregations, the earliest from the seventeenth century. A Jewish tombstone of the Roman period from Pannonia, the oldest trace of Jewish presence on this ground. The Holocaust room, with documents from the Budapest ghetto. The collection of the Chevra Kadisha burial society.
Minimum route — 45–90 minutes for the essentials
30 minutes with the silver and the textiles. 15 minutes at the Roman tombstone and the early documents. 20 minutes in the Holocaust room.
Reference
About the museum
The museum was founded on 1 December 1909 by the Israelite Hungarian Literary Society. Its building adjoins the Great Synagogue on Dohány utca and stands on the plot where the house in which Theodor Herzl was born once stood. The collection went on working until 1944, and part of it was hidden away, which is why it looks as it does now.
Getting in
How to get there
Metro M2 to Astoria, five minutes on foot. The way in is through the courtyard of the Dohány Street Synagogue.
Opening times
We have not checked the opening hours. The museum belongs to the synagogue complex and its hours move with the Jewish calendar.
When to go
A morning, we would say: from the afternoon guided parties fill the synagogue courtyard and a queue forms at the door.
Contacts
Nearby
- National Museum 550 m from here
- Stamp Museum 950 m from here
- Liszt Museum 1.3 km from here
If this moved you
In the same city
If the silver and textiles of a community leave you asking what became of it, the answer is laid out week by week at the centre on Páva utca.
Abroad
If you want to see the same history told another way, the Moscow museum builds it around conversation rather than around the object.
The Jewish Museum · Moscow
· No. 116