Ybl’s Opera, Lechner’s tiled roofs and the House of Music: Budapest’s arts

Budapest is a city built for culture on a grand scale: an opera house on its finest avenue, an academy founded by Liszt, Art Nouveau roofs glittering with ceramic tiles and, in City Park, a new museum quarter among the trees. Here is the story behind it, and how to enjoy it today.

The avenue of music

Andrássy Avenue, the boulevard that runs from the city centre to Heroes’ Square, is where Budapest’s love affair with music takes centre stage. Halfway along stands the Hungarian State Opera House, Miklós Ybl’s Neo-Renaissance palace, inaugurated on 27 September 1884 after almost fifteen years of building.

The house closed in 2017 for a renovation that replaced its stage machinery, improved its acoustics, renewed its limestone façade and restored its standing places, and it reopened in March 2022. See it by day on a guided tour, but better still, come for an evening performance, when the gilded auditorium is full.

A few streets away, on Liszt Ferenc Square, the Liszt Academy was founded in 1875 by Franz Liszt himself. Its building of 1907 is a masterpiece of Hungarian Art Nouveau, with gilding, mosaics and carved wood, and its Grand Hall is one of the city’s most loved places to hear music. The Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum is close by.

Hungarian Art Nouveau

Around 1900 Budapest was one of the capitals of Art Nouveau, known here as szecesszió. Its great architect, Ödön Lechner, set out to create a Hungarian national style, drawing on folk embroidery and Eastern ornament and working with the Zsolnay factory in Pécs, whose frost-proof glazed tiles let him cover roofs and façades in colour.

His Museum of Applied Arts on Üllői út opened in 1896 under a roof of green and gold; the building is closed for a long renovation, so check the museum’s website for exhibitions elsewhere. Lechner’s former Postal Savings Bank on Hold utca, completed in 1901, is easier to admire: its yellow-tiled roof has ceramic bees climbing towards their hives, a symbol of saving.

From there, walk to the Gresham Palace by the Chain Bridge, the Párisi Udvar arcade and the Gellért Baths, and you have a morning’s Art Nouveau trail. Our advice: bring binoculars or a good zoom lens. The best details are high up.

City Park’s museum quarter

City Park, Budapest’s oldest public park, has been reshaped by the Liget Budapest project into a museum quarter. Its star is the House of Music Hungary by the Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, opened in January 2022: a glass pavilion beneath a vast perforated roof that feels like standing under a tree canopy, telling the story of music through exhibitions, concerts and events.

Across the park, the Museum of Ethnography has moved into a striking new building with two curving wings and a green roof you can walk on. Its collection exhibition covers more than 3,000 square metres, with almost 3,600 objects in eight thematic sections, and its temporary shows change through the year.

At the head of the park, Heroes’ Square is framed by two classical temples of art: the Museum of Fine Arts, with European art from antiquity to the Old Masters in its restored halls, and the Hall of Art, the Műcsarnok, for major contemporary exhibitions. Finish with a soak at the Széchenyi Baths a short walk away.

On Castle Hill

Across the Danube, the Hungarian National Gallery fills the wings of the royal palace on Castle Hill with Hungarian art from medieval altarpieces to the 20th century, including the visionary landscapes of Csontváry and the great canvases of Munkácsy. Come for the art and stay for the view over the river from the palace terraces.

In Budapest, look up: the city’s finest art is often on its roofs, in green and gold Zsolnay tiles.

Contemporary Budapest

In south Pest, beside the Danube, Müpa Budapest, the Palace of Arts, opened in 2005. It brings together the Béla Bartók National Concert Hall, admired for its acoustics, the Festival Theatre and the Ludwig Museum of contemporary art, so you can see an exhibition and hear a concert in a single evening.

In Ferencváros, Trafó House of Contemporary Arts, in a former electricity transformer station, is the city’s home for new dance, theatre and music. On Nagymező Street, the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center honours the Budapest-born photographer with documentary and contemporary photography.

For galleries, visit Várfok on the slope below Castle Hill for contemporary Hungarian painting, Kieselbach for Hungarian masters, and acb on Király utca for new work. Then cross to the Budapest Operetta Theatre or the Vígszínház for an evening on stage.

Cultural calendar

The Budapest Wagner Days return to Müpa for the 22nd time from 11 to 27 June 2027, with Der fliegende Holländer and Tristan und Isolde in the Béla Bartók National Concert Hall; the festival’s founding artistic director, Ádám Fischer, conducts Tristan. Book early: the Wagner Days are among the most sought-after tickets of the Budapest year.

Art Market Budapest, the city’s international contemporary art fair, publishes its catalogue and programme on its own website. Check the official festival and venue websites before you travel: programmes and dates are announced there first.

What’s new

Museum of Ethnography (checked October 2026): A Soldier’s Lot, a new temporary exhibition on compulsory military service, runs from 30 September 2026 to 29 August 2027, alongside Rituals of Beauty, until 4 January 2027.

City Park (checked October 2026): the Urban Oasis opened in the Biodome of the Budapest Zoo on 1 July 2026, a new addition to the park’s museum quarter.

Our advice: book one night at the Opera and one at the Liszt Academy, spend a day in City Park between the museums and the baths, and walk Lechner’s roofs on the morning in between.