Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
the Operetta Theatre at no. 17, take a look at the
statue
of the composer
ImreKálmán
, loun-
ging on a bench. Better known to the world as Emmerich Kalman, he penned such operetta
favourites as
The Gypsy Princess
and
Countess Maritsa
- it's a genre that wins Hungarian
hearts with its combination of music and melodrama. Strangely, the statue has a bronze com-
puter beside it: the idea was that you could look at the theatre's website on it, but that did not
account for vandals. Two blocks down from Nagymező utca, on Paulay Ede utca, take a peek
at the
New Theatre
, whose blue and gold early Art Deco facade and foyer (by Béla Lajta in
1909) look superb.
Mai Manó House (Hungarian House of Photography)
Mai Manó Ház (Magyar Fotográfusok Háza) • VI, Nagymező utca 20 • Mon-Fri 2-7pm, Sat, Sun & holidays
11am-7pm •1500Ft • 1 473 2666,
maimano.hu
During the interwar years, the best-known club on Nagymező utca was the Arizona at no.
20: “the most glamorous nightclub I have ever visited,” said Patrick Leigh Fermor, who went
there on his way across Europe. It was run by Sándor Rozsnyai and his wife, Miss Arizona.
However, he was sent to a concentration camp and she was murdered by the Arrow Cross in
1944 (which inspired Pál Sándor's 1988 film,
Miss Arizona
, starring Hanna Schygulla and
Marcello Mastroianni). The bottle-green-tiled building was the former home of the Habsburg
court photographer
Mai Manó,
which made it a fitting choice for the photography museum
that occupies it today. It hosts temporary exhibitions in three separate galleries, and an ex-
cellent photographic bookshop on the first floor - the colourful café on the ground floor is a
well-frequented haunt.
Robert Capa Contemporary Photographic Centre
Robert Capa Kortárs Fotográfiai Központ • VI, Nagymező utca 8 • Tues-Sun 11am-7pm • 1500Ft • 1 413
1310,
capacenter.hu
On the opposite side of Andrássy út is the
Robert Capa Contemporary Photographic
Centre,
named after the renowned war photographer (and founder of Magnum Photos) who
was born in Budapest in 1913. A fabulous exhibition space, it is the venue for the city's
most important photographic exhibitions, including the annual Hungarian Press Photo Com-
petition, which usually takes place in April. In any case, it's worth a peek inside to see the
Art Nouveau features by József Rippl-Rónai and Ödön Lechner; take a look at the Art Deco
lobby of the Tivoli Theatre next door, too.
Miklós Radnóti statue
Across the road, outside the theatre at no. 11 that takes his name, lounges a statue of one
of Hungary's finest poets,
Miklós Radnóti
, whose most powerful poems were written while
serving in a Jewish labour brigade in the war. When his body was exhumed eighteen months
after he was shot in 1944, a notebook of his last poems was discovered in his pocket.
