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Budapest museums · Art
Art · since 1896

Museum of Fine Arts

original name: Szépművészeti Múzeum
world-class
The Spaniards are the reason to come. Bought whole, the Esterházy pictures gave Budapest an almost unbroken line of Spanish painting from the fifteenth century to the turn of the twentieth, and that line stands with the Louvre’s and the Hermitage’s. Italian Renaissance painting is thinner here than in Vienna or Dresden. Hungarian art is absent altogether — it lives across the river in the National Gallery, which is a division of labour between two houses of the same institution rather than a gap.
Minimum route
2–3 hours
Founded
1896
Ticket
from HUF 5,800
Today
10:00–18:00
What to see

The Esterházy Madonna by Raphael, one panel out of the 637 paintings the state bought in 1870–1871. The Spanish rooms: El Greco, Velázquez, Ribera, Murillo, Goya. 263 Dutch and Flemish pictures arrived in the same purchase. The Egyptian department holds coffins, stelae and burial goods. Among the old sculpture stands a bronze Horse and Rider that the museum connects with Leonardo da Vinci.

Minimum route — 2–3 hours for the essentials

45 minutes in the Spanish rooms of the old master gallery. 20 minutes for the Esterházy Madonna and the Italians beside it. 25 minutes for the Dutch and Flemish. 20 minutes for Egypt. The Romanesque Hall, painted from floor to vault and reopened after the 2018 restoration, is worth walking through once.

Reference
About the museum
The museum was founded in 1896. Albert Schickedanz and Fülöp Herzog built the house on Heroes’ Square between 1900 and 1906; it opened in December of that year. What fills it came from the private cabinets of the Hungarian nobility and clergy — the Esterházys, Archbishop Pyrker, Bishop Ipolyi, Miklós Jankovich. Five departments: Egypt, classical antiquity, old master paintings, old sculpture, prints and drawings.
Getting in
Addresschecked on 22 August 2026, the museum website
Dózsa György út 41, 1146 Budapest (Heroes’ Square)
How to get there
Metro M1 to Hősök tere. Trolleybuses 72, 75 and 79 and buses 105 and 210 stop at the same square. Two minutes from the exit to the door.
Opening timeschecked on 22 August 2026, the museum website
open now until 18:00
Monclosed
Tue–Sun today10:00–18:00
Closed on Mondays. The ticket desk and the shop close at 17:45, the café at 17:30.
Ticketschecked on 22 August 2026, the museum website
Permanent collection 5,800 forints. Temporary exhibitions are ticketed separately.
from HUF 5,800
tickets online
When to go
We would come at opening time on a Tuesday or a Wednesday. By midday the Spanish rooms fill with groups.
Contacts
szepmuveszeti.hu
Access for visitors with limited mobility
The museum — not checked. We have not checked how accessible the building is: the museum says nothing about it on its own pages.
Nearby
All nearby
If this moved you
In the same city

If after the Spanish rooms you want to know what was painted here, Hungarian art in full stands across the river, in the Buda palace.

outstandingNational Gallery
Elsewhere in the country

If you want to see where this collection came from, the Esterházys lived an hour and a half away: their palace at Tata stands on the water and is full of their own things.

for enthusiastsThe Esterházy Palace · Tata
Abroad

If the plan of this house feels familiar, Moscow built the same kind of museum in the same years and on the same thought: casts to learn from, old masters to look at.

world-classThe Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts · Moscow
· No. 103

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