The Museum of Fine Arts Budapest, inaugurated in 1906, occupies a prominent place among Europe’s most prestigious public collections thanks to the diversity and historical continuity of its collections as well as the plethora of its masterpieces. It presents works from the universal and Hungarian history of art from antiquity to the late 18th century. Visitors to its permanent exhibitions can view masterpieces by artist including Raphael, Giorgione, Dürer, Holbein, Cranach, Titian, El Greco, Rubens, Van Dyck, Velázquez, Murillo, Poussin, Goya, Reynolds and Constable.

Following the largest-scale reconstruction project in its history, the museum reopened at the end of 2018. Restored to its original beauty, the Romanesque Hall, evoking the interior of a medieval basilica, is welcoming visitors again, after previously being closed off to the public for seventy years. Simultaneously with the building’s reconstruction, the exhibitions have also been renewed: besides being home to ancient cultures – see the collections of Egyptian and Classical Antiquities – it is now also home to fine art before 1800.

The Hungarian House of Parliament decreed the construction of the Museum of Fine Arts in the Millennium Act of 1896 and only a decade later the beautiful spaces of Hungary’s first permanent museum of fine arts, designed by Albert Schickedanz, were opened to the public. The history of the museum’s collections is closely linked to that of Hungarian art collecting. The treasures of Hungarian rulers had been scattered in the storms of history, therefore, the Museum of Fine Arts, established in 1896, united the 18th- and 19th-century aristocratic and ecclesiastical collections. The most important of these was the Esterházy Collection, thanks to the purchase of which in 1870–1871 the National Picture Gallery, the predecessor of the Museum of Fine Arts, was founded. During the more than one hundred years of its history, the number of works in the museum’s various collections increased manifold, while new collection units were also formed. The size of its holdings currently exceeds 120 thousand items.