Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and its destiny decided by intriguers and warlords, including the Forgáchs and Nádasdys de-
picted in the oldest
portraits
in Hungary, hung in room 8 - except for the infamous “Blood
Countess” Erzsébet Báthori, whose picture is kept in storage. As the widow of national hero
Ferenc Nádasdy, charged with torturing six hundred women to death and reputedly bathing
in their blood to preserve her beauty, she was walled up in her castle and the atrocity hushed
up.
From here, proceed back across the rotunda to find the Reform era and the
belle époque
,
covered in rooms 11-18. Here, too, you'll find
Beethoven's Broadwood piano
, which was
subsequentlyacquiredbyLiszt,someofwhosekeepsakesarealsoondisplay.Followingcov-
erage of World War II, the last room is given over to the Communist era, featuring newsreel
footage and such items as a radio set dedicated to Stalin's 70th birthday, a scaled-down mod-
el of the Stalin statue torn down by crowds in 1956, and kitsch tributes to János Kádár, who
reimposed Communist rule with a vengeance, but later liberalized it to the point that his suc-
cessors felt able to abandon it entirely.
