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Budapest museums · Art
Art · since 1872

Applied Arts

Museum of Applied Arts
original name: Iparművészeti Múzeum
significant
Lechner’s building belongs to the first rank of European Art Nouveau and it is still standing, though at present one cannot go in. The collection itself — Hungarian and European furniture, glass, ceramics, textiles — compares with the Vienna MAK in what it holds and loses to it in what can be seen: Vienna is open, Budapest is not. While the museum is shut, the place to go is the Ráth Villa, where Hungarian Art Nouveau is on show.
Founded
1872

The museum is currently closed to visitors.

What to see

From the outside only. Ödön Lechner’s front on Üllői út and the great dome above it: a Hungarian ornament laid in ceramic from the Zsolnay works at Pécs. The pyrogranite tiles have been knocked off the façade, the plaster is coming away and the walls let in water, so what one sees is the condition that closed the place. The doors have opened twice — for the Opus 735 exhibition in 2022 and for the Night of Museums in June 2026. The rest of the time the glass-roofed hall with its two-storey arcades can be walked only in the museum’s virtual tour.

Reference
About the museum
The collection was begun in 1872, making this the third museum of applied arts in the world after London and Vienna. Ödön Lechner and Gyula Pártos designed the house on Üllői út; Franz Joseph opened it on 25 October 1896. The museum has been shut since 2017 for restoration: the pyrogranite tiles have been knocked off the façade and the walls let in water, and by August 2026 the rebuilding had not begun. Part of the collection is shown at the Ráth Villa on Városligeti fasor.
The building
Lechner was after a Hungarian architectural language and assembled one from Indian and Persian motifs laid over a sectional iron frame. The ceramic skin, inside and out, came from the Zsolnay works at Pécs: pyrogranite takes frost and keeps its colour. The domed hall within is white, with pointed arches and a glass roof. Contemporaries thought the building too Asiatic.
Getting in
Addresschecked on 22 August 2026, the museum website
Üllői út 33–37, 1091 Budapest
Opening times

The museum is closed to visitors.

Closed since 2017. As of August 2026 the restoration work had not started.
Contacts
imm.hu
Nearby
All nearby
If this moved you
In the same city

If you have come to Lechner’s locked doors, the collection itself hangs at the Ráth Villa on Városligeti fasor — the Hungarian Art Nouveau this museum was built for.

for enthusiastsRáth Villa
Abroad

If Lechner has shown you how a style of one’s own is assembled out of borrowed motifs, Viktor Vasnetsov was doing the same in Moscow: the house he built for himself in 1894 is called the first dwelling house of the neo-Russian manner.

for enthusiastsThe Vasnetsov House · Moscow
· No. 107

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