Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
today). The latter's proximity to an abundance of gold and silver quarries is manifest in a
spectacular output of both religious and secular metalwork, from ritual statues and jewellery
toeverydayobjectslikecutleryandpourers.LookouttooforartefactsfromtheCultofShiva,
a Hindu god, and in particular the amusingly precise phallic symbols (linga) made from stone
or rock crystal. Intricately ornamented crowns (diadems) take star billing in the religious art
section, and in another room, floor-to-ceiling high with Buddha statues, you can view a rare
ritual drum with frogs crawling around the rim, supposedly denoting rains and agricultural
fertility.
The
oriental teahouse
and adjoining
tropical sculpture garden
are well worth visiting
once you're done, while the shop sells original pieces, though at prices most won't be able to
afford.
Post Office Museum
Posta Múzeum • VI, Benczúr utca 27 • Tues-Sun 10am-6pm • 500Ft • 1 269 6838,
postamuzeum.hu
Since being established in 1881, the wonderful
Post Office Museum
has had a somewhat
nomadic existence, only moving to its current home here in the Benczúr House (with which
the postal service has long had various associations) in 2012. The Hungarian Postal Service
(Magyar Posta) itself was founded in 1867, following the country's separation from Austria,
and its history since is surprisingly noteworthy. Indeed, it can boast a series of notable firsts:
in 1869, it became the first country in the world (along with Austria) to introduce the post-
card, while in 1881 it was one of the first to install a telephone exchange - thanks largely to
the work of inventor and telephone pioneer Tivadar Puskás, a colleague of Thomas Edison.
More impressive, though, were the technical innovations, from the manufacture and intro-
duction of mechanically emptied mailboxes, to the use of petrol-driven vehicles for mail col-
lection and delivery, at the end of the nineteenth century - as testified by the vintage delivery
vehicles designed by engineer János Csonka.
György Ráth Museum
Ráth György Múzeum • VI, Városligeti fasor 12 • Open by appointment only: ask at the
Ferenc Hopp Museum
or ring 1 456 5110 • 600Ft
In an Art Nouveau villa on Városligeti fasor, which runs parallel to Andrássy and is lined
with even finer mansions, the
György Ráth Museum
displays artefacts from the same col-
lection as the Ferenc Hopp Museum. The statue in the garden of a Buddhist monk actually
depicts Sándor Kőrösi-Csoma, a Hungarian who achieved fame by compiling the first Eng-
lish-Tibetan dictionary, though his real goal was a vain search for the ancestors of the Hun-
garian people. Highlights include an early fourteenth-century lacquer Water-Moon Guany-
in Bodhisattva in the Chinese collection, a seventeenth- to eighteenth-century gilt bronze
Buddha in the Mongolian collection, and a fifteenth-century Kalachakra mandala in the
Tibetan Collection.
