Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
you'll be shown a
scale model
of Parliament made of 100,000 matchsticks, built by a patri-
otic family over three years.
ST STEPHEN'S CROWN
The much revered
St Stephen's Crown
, the jewel of the Coronation Regalia on display
in the Parliament building, consists in fact of two crowns joined together: the cruciform
crown that was sent as a gift by Pope Sylvester II to Stephen for his coronation in 1000,
and a circlet given by the Byzantine monarch to King Géza I. The distinctive bent cross
was caused by the crown being squashed as it was smuggled out of a palace in a baby's
cradle. At other times it has been hidden in a hay-cart or buried in Transylvania, abduc-
ted to Germany by Hungarian Fascists and thence taken to the US, where it reposed in
Fort Knox until its return home in 1978, together with Stephen's crystal-headed sceptre, a
fourteenth-century gold-plated orb and a sixteenth-century sword made in Vienna, used by
his successors. Under the Dual Monarchy, Habsburg emperors ruled Hungary in the name
of St Stephen, and travelled to Budapest for a special coronation ceremony, traditionally
held in the Mátyás Church in the Vár.
Museum of Ethnography
Néprajzi Múzeum • V, Kossuth Lajos tér 12 • Tues-Sun 10am-6pm • 1000Ft • 1 473 2400,
neprajz.hu
Across the road from Kossuth's statue stands a neo-Renaissance building housing the
Mu-
seum of Ethnography
. Little visited by tourists, it's actually one of the finest museums in
Budapest, originally built as the Palace of the Supreme Court; petitioners would have been
overawed by its lofty, gilded main hall, whose ceiling bears a fresco of the goddess Justitia
surrounded by allegories of Justice, Peace, Revenge and Sin.
The museum's permanent exhibition on Hungarian folk culture occupies thirteen rooms on
the first floor (off the left-hand staircase) and is fully captioned in English, with an excellent
catalogue available. Exhibits from all over the Carpathian Basin, including a reconstructed
church interior, bear traps, painted furniture and plentiful photos, are well presented under
headings such as “Institutions” and “Peasant Work”, but there's only occasional reference to
the range of ethnic groups who lived in Habsburg-ruled Hungary. Though few of the beau-
tiful costumes and objects on display are part of everyday life in Hungary, you can still see
them in parts of Romania, such as Maramureş and the Kalotaszeg, which belonged to Hun-
gary before 1920.
Temporary exhibitions
(on the ground and second floors) cover anything from Hindu
rituals to musical instruments from around the world, while over Easter and Christmas there
are
concerts
of Hungarian folk music and dancing, and
craft fairs
.
