Unofficial visitor guide · Budapest
Szépművészeti Múzeum · Google Maps
Official audio guide · English Yes · 10 languages · HUF 1,200
The Museum of Fine Arts (Szépművészeti Múzeum) on Heroes' Square shows Egyptian and classical antiquities and European and Hungarian art up to 1800. Its audio guide covers about 120 works in nine languages, with German for some sections only. If yours isn't among them, or you want more than the selected works, here is what helps.
Independent guide by the makers of Tales of Museums. Not affiliated with the Museum of Fine Arts.
Checked on 15 October 2026 from the sources linked above. Museums change their guides and rules; confirm on the official Museum of Fine Arts website before you go.
Checked on 15 October 2026 from the sources linked above. Museums change their guides and rules; confirm on the official Museum of Fine Arts website before you go.
Swipe for the works and stories worth knowing before you go.
Bombed in the Second World War, this painted hall was closed and used as a storeroom for about seventy years, crammed with damaged plaster casts. Reopened after the 2015–2018 restoration, it still holds the cast of Freiberg Cathedral's Golden Gate.
The hall copies a Renaissance palace courtyard and holds 85 Italian frescos, the largest such collection outside Italy. They were cut from decaying churches and palaces and bought in 1893–1895, then hung in date order on both levels.
Raphael never finished this small panel: the Virgin's face and the two children are still at the underpainting stage. The Virgin's pose comes from Leonardo, and the scroll Saint John holds was meant to carry his prophecy. Gallery XIX, first floor.
In November 1983 thieves took seven Italian Renaissance paintings from the museum, the Esterházy Madonna among them. A Raphael portrait was found buried in Hungary; the rest had been taken to Greece, where Italian carabinieri recovered them from an abandoned convent the next year.
None of Leonardo's planned horse monuments was ever finished. This small bronze echoes his drawings for the lost Battle of Anghiari and may come from one of his wax models; its rearing horse is balanced to stand without extra support. Gallery XX, first floor.
The museum holds more paintings by El Greco than any other collection in Europe outside Spain. Gallery XXIV on the first floor shows several of them, including The Annunciation, where the Virgin's room dissolves into clouds and flashes of light.
Painted while Napoleon's troops were in Spain, this young woman carrying water has been read as a tribute to the ordinary defenders of Zaragoza. Goya turns a rustic genre figure into something close to a monument. Gallery XXVIII, second floor.
Over 500 objects are arranged by theme, not date: temples and gods, life in the Nile Valley, and tombs. Even the wall colours carry meaning, from sky-blue to desert sand and old gold for the dead, and you can try sounding a sistrum rattle.
Emperor Franz Joseph opened the building on 1 December 1906. In the last months of the Second World War most masterpieces were loaded onto rail cars and taken west; they came back from Germany in 1946–1947, many of them damaged.
Tales of Museums reads the label in front of you aloud in your language, for any label you can photograph. The museum asks you to mute your phone and not to talk loudly, so bring headphones and mobile data.
Coming soon to the App Store for iPhone
The museum's audio guide (HUF 1,200) covers about 120 works in Hungarian, English, French, Italian, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese, and about 50 works in German. It is not offered in Hebrew, Portuguese or Polish. You buy it on the day at the museum; it cannot be booked. mfab.hu: tickets · szepmuveszeti.hu: prices (Hungarian)
Yes. The museum runs pre-announced 60-minute tours in Hungarian or English, for which everyone buys a supplementary ticket (HUF 1,500 or 2,000) on top of admission. Groups of up to 17 can book a tour in English or another language for HUF 30,000 plus admission, at least two weeks ahead. szepmuveszeti.hu: prices (Hungarian) · mfab.hu: tickets
Yes, for personal use with any admission ticket, without flash, monopods, tripods or selfie sticks. In some temporary exhibitions photos are restricted, which is signed at the exhibition entrance. mfab.hu: museum rules
Yes. The museum's rules ask you to mute your phone, avoid calls in the exhibitions and not disturb others with loud talking. Audio and video recording is not allowed during guided tours. mfab.hu: museum rules
Not for the permanent exhibitions: tickets are sold online and at the desk, and the time on an online ticket covers the whole day. Big temporary exhibitions use hourly arrival slots and only a limited number of tickets are sold on site, so buy those online. Entry is until 5 pm, Tuesday to Sunday. mfab.hu: tickets · szepmuveszeti.hu: prices (Hungarian) · mfab.hu: plan your visit
Take the M1 metro, or buses and trolleybuses, to Heroes' Square; the entrance is a one- or two-minute walk. The museum has no car park of its own; the Museum Underground Parking is about ten minutes' walk away. mfab.hu: accessibility and getting here
Mostly. An outdoor lift beside the main stairs takes you to the entrance, three lifts run inside, and a stairlift reaches the European Sculpture rooms (ask an attendant). Wheelchairs can be borrowed free of charge. mfab.hu: accessibility
Children under 6 get in free, strollers can be borrowed free for children up to 15 kg, and family "Adventure Suitcases" with games are lent until 4 pm for HUF 2,000. Children under 2 must be in a stroller or a front carrier, and under-14s need an adult with them. mfab.hu: tickets · mfab.hu: museum rules
The Museum of Fine Arts is closed on Mondays and open Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00, with admission until 17:00; it also closes on some national holidays, such as 23 October, and on 24 and 25 December. One Friday a month the museum opens from 12:00 to 20:00 for its Museum and Slow evening, with admission until 19:00. mfab.hu: Opening hours in 2026 · mfab.hu: Plan your visit
Yes. The Museum of Fine Arts' Fine Art Bistro, a café and self-service restaurant in one, is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 17:30, but only with an admission ticket, which you also need for the toilets. Without a ticket you can enter only the entrance hall, the Museum Shop and the Marble Hall. mfab.hu: Fine Art Bistro · mfab.hu: Plan your visit
At the Museum of Fine Arts the free cloakroom is compulsory for all backpacks, umbrellas, packages and bags over 30 × 25 × 15 cm, and each visitor can leave one suitcase of up to 40 × 50 × 80 cm; a free take-and-return bag from the cloakroom holds the valuables you want to keep with you. No bag may be carried on your back, and the only drink allowed in is one clear bottle of still water of up to 0.5 litres. mfab.hu: museum rules (not permitted in the building, cloakroom)
Tales of Museums is an independent app and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to the Museum of Fine Arts. Translations, narration and the extra facts use AI and can contain mistakes, so for anything important, check the museum's official information and the linked sources. Please follow the museum's photography rules.