House of the Hungarian Millennium | NEO Contemporary Art Space
The jewellery box of the City Park
This building is over 130 years old and has one of Hungary’s most beautiful façades decorated with thousands of Zsolnay ceramic tiles. Surrounded by nature, it has an unrivalled ambiance. Anyone who worked on its renovation will always cherish the memory of having contributed to saving one of Hungary’s special architectural treasures. We can assure you that you will not be able to walk past the building without taking at least one photo of it. When you enter, you can choose from cultural events, exhibitions, a guided tour of the history of the building and museum educational activities for children. But if you just want to relax a bit in a millennial milieu, take a seat in the café, which is also decorated with Zsolnay ceramics.
Zsolnay’s success
First of all, take some time to walk around the building. The Zsolnay ceramics you will see on the exterior are unmatched by any other. Before the renovation of the building, a meticulous, comprehensive restoration plan was made to restore the façade to its original beauty of more than a century ago. This incredibly precise work done by dozens of restorers took nearly two years. Two thousand ceramic pieces were restored on-site alone, and another 2,500 in an external workshop. The damaged and missing elements – over 2,000 pieces – were replaced using the original production technology based on surviving contemporary photographs of the building and Zsolnay’s sample books. This meticulous and painstaking project has won numerous accolades, including awards from organisations such as the international jury of FIABCI and the Bernhard Remmers Academy in Germany, which recognise the preservation of architectural heritage.
It is worth spending some time inside the House of the Hungarian Millennium too to see its Zsolnay decorations. You will find Renaissance motifs, faun heads reminiscent of medieval churches as well as Egyptian and Greek female figures, but if you look closer, you can discover Persian winged lions on the ornate façade. You can also notice portraits of the three great Renaissance geniuses – Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo – pop up here and there among the scroll-leaf decorations, vases with dragons and winged lions.
.jpg)
.jpg)
1 Did you know?
This building was the one that brought success to the Zsolnay factory in Budapest. This was the first time they designed and manufactured ceramics to decorate a building, which was still a novelty in Budapest at the time. The building, designed by Ferenc Pfaff, was constructed for the National General Exhibition in 1885 as an art hall. Contemporary critics praised it as one of the most beautiful features of the exhibition, thanks to the unique and colourful Zsolnay decorations.
.jpg)
NEO Contemporary Art Space
It is not only the exterior of the building that is unique, but also what it houses inside. It is home to the NEO Contemporary Art Space, the latest exhibition space in the City Park, which provides an opportunity to present a wide spectrum of contemporary artworks and installations on a floor area of 350 square metres. This venue places major emphasis on promoting art through education: it organises guided tours led by the curators as well as accompanying events arranged from ensembles of mutually inspiring branches of art, and museum education workshops for small children.
Zsolnay restaurant and café
The 130-year-old House of the Hungarian Millennium also has a special café and restaurant with a cosy ambiance for pleasant private or business lunches, coffee and other drinks. Moreover, the restaurant has a terrace, which is like an island of tranquillity under the foliage of the City Park.
Rose garden, Zsolnay fountain
Besides restoring the House of the Hungarian Millennium to its former glory inside and out, the surrounding areas were also renewed and a unique rose garden was created by the main entrance: every summer, flowers from different rose species of various colours and fragrances evoke the milieu and ambiance of Budapest’s golden age. Landscape architects designed the Rose Garden with 1,500 rose bushes to match the character of the building. You can get a sampler of the new, ‘modern rose varieties’ and see some old but still popular varieties from the 17th to 18th centuries. You can delight in rose species that thrive in semi-shade as well as ones that are sun lovers. You can also find perennial flowers that can be matched well with roses. Standing in the centre of the rose garden is a newly built Zsolnay fountain, which harmonises with the atmosphere of the building and the flowers.
01 18
Awards of the House of the Hungarian Millennium
- FIABCI XXII. Hungarian Property Development Award Competition – Culture and education category, 2020
- Budapest Construction Industry Award – Reconstruction of a Listed Building, 2020
- Bernhard Remmers Academy – Renovation of a Historic Monument, international category winner, 2022