Standing to one side of Heroes' Square, this distinguished museum features centuries of art and sculpture.
The Museum of Fine Arts ticks all the boxes of an art museum of distinction. It has the pedigree – the core of its collection was started in the 17th century. It has the building – the purpose-built neoclassical Szépművészeti Múzeum is known for its fabulously presented gallery spaces. And it has the location – the museum faces out onto the iconic Heroes' Square, which shows the Museum off to its very best.It also has the fine art. Built up from many separate painting and sculpture collections over the last three centuries, the Museum of Fine Arts has an exceptionally rich pool of artistic endeavour to draw on. It is particularly strong in paintings from Europe's Old Masters, which number some 3,000 all told. That allows it to tell the full story of the development of western painting, from the twelfth century right through to the 1700s.Paintings to look out for include Titian's Portrait of Doge Marcantonio Trevisani, Correggio's Madonna and Child with an Angel, and Raphael's Esterhazy Madonna. There is also a set of rooms devoted to Old Sculptures, from the same period, including a number of excellent bronzes – such as an exquisite equestrian statue by Leonardo da Vinci. The collection also includes Austrian and German painted wooden sculptures.But it’s not just fine Western art on display here. The Museum of Fine Arts has the second biggest collection of Egyptian art in Europe, thanks to donations by Eduard Mahler, the famed Hungarian Egyptologist. And as you'd expect, sculptures and pieces from Ancient Greece and Rome feature prominently too. A particularly prized work is an elegant 3rd-century Greek marble statue of a dancing girl, known as the 'Budapest dancer'.The Museum also includes a good selection of paintings from the Modern era too. Manet, Monet, Delacroix, and Cézanne all feature in its 'Art after 1800' exhibit, as do sculptures by Rodin and Meunier. Prints and drawings have their own display space, including many by Da Vinci, Rembrandt and Goya. All told there are 100,000 works of art tucked into this century-old building – making it well worth a visit.
