Skip to content

Your browser is older than this page. The catalogue still reads here: the list, the filter and the cards all work. Your browser will mark filter choices with plain checkboxes, as best it can. Update your browser to see the page as it was built.

Enfilade
Nearby
How we work
EN
Language
EnglishFrançaisNederlandsРусский
Budapest museums · Art
Art · since 1957

National Gallery

Hungarian National Gallery
original name: Magyar Nemzeti Galéria
outstanding
Hungarian painting is gathered here as it is nowhere else on earth. Csontváry and Szinyei Merse barely leave the country, so any judgement of them has to be formed in these rooms. The Gothic altarpieces are the second reason to climb the hill: complete cabinets stand in rows, carving and wings together, where most European collections keep single panels prised out of their frames. Foreign art is thin — the international department runs from Courbet to Baselitz and does not pretend to replace Paris or Vienna.
Minimum route
2–3 hours
Founded
1957
Ticket
from HUF 5,800
Today
10:00–18:00
What to see

Late Gothic winged altarpieces: whole altar cabinets lifted out of parish churches in Upper Hungary and set in one hall. Picnic in May by Pál Szinyei Merse, painted in 1873 and refused by his contemporaries. The room of Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka, with The Lonely Cedar and Pilgrimage to the Cedars in Lebanon. Yawning Apprentice by Mihály Munkácsy. Turn-of-the-century sculpture and Hungarian modernism: József Rippl-Rónai, Károly Ferenczy, Lajos Gulácsy.

Minimum route — 2–3 hours for the essentials

30 minutes among the Gothic altarpieces. 25 minutes in the Csontváry room. 20 minutes for the nineteenth century, the Picnic in May and Munkácsy. 20 minutes for the turn of the century and the modernists. 15 minutes in the dome if the weather is clear.

Reference
About the museum
The gallery was separated from the National Museum in 1957 and has occupied the wings of the Buda royal palace since 1975; in 2012 it was joined administratively to the Museum of Fine Arts. It holds Hungarian painting and sculpture from the Gothic period to the later twentieth century. Where it will move once it leaves the palace had not been decided by August 2026.
Getting in
Address
Szent György tér 2, 1014 Budapest (Buda Castle)
How to get there
The funicular from the Chain Bridge, or bus 16 to Dísz tér. On foot from the bridge it is twenty minutes uphill.
Opening timeschecked on 22 August 2026, the museum website
open now until 18:00
Mon–Sun today10:00–18:00
Open every day except the last Monday of the month. The dome closes at 17:00 and stays shut in bad weather.
Ticketschecked on 22 August 2026, the museum website
Permanent collection 5,800 forints. An annual pass costs 9,000.
from HUF 5,800
tickets online
When to go
We would come on a weekday morning: the palace is up a hill, and the coach groups climb it after lunch.
Contacts
mng.hu
Access for visitors with limited mobilitychecked on 22 August 2026, the museum website
The museum — partly. The step-free entrance is in building B, at the staff door; a ramp right of the arcades leads to it. A porter walks visitors to the galleries. A wheelchair is lent free of charge by the attendants. For blind visitors there are 3D-printed tactile copies of sculptures by Rodin, Ferenczy and Izsó. A sign-language interpreter can be booked. QR codes beside the Csontváry paintings open sign-language video and audio description.
Nearby
All nearby
If this moved you
In the same city

If Csontváry and Szinyei Merse leave you asking what the Hungarians measured themselves against, Europe’s old masters hang by Heroes’ Square.

world-classMuseum of Fine Arts

If Hungarian painting has raised the question of the history behind it, the museum this gallery was separated from in 1957 stands on Múzeum körút: the Roman lapidarium of Pannonia, the gold of Avar graves, the History of Hungary in two parts.

outstandingNational Museum
Abroad

If a national school gathered under one roof seems a rare thing, Moscow has such a house in Lavrushinsky Lane, and it too was gathered by one man.

world-classThe Tretyakov Gallery · Moscow
· No. 104

← all museums Budapest