Budapest makeover: how modern architecture is transforming Hungary’s capital

Maria Siklos remembers well what the banks of the Danube used to look like. “It was totally run down and terrible. There were warehouses and empty lots. But the area itself was beautiful.”

Shortly after the turn of the millennium, the National Theatre was built to the designs of the 83-year-old architect. It was the dawn of a new age in Budapest, which Siklos helped usher in.

Since then, the cranes haven’t stood still and Hungary’s capital has been in constant transformation. The most recent prestigious projects are located in the city park not far from the Eastern Railway Station: the House of Music, which opened at the beginning of the year, and the new building of the Museum of Ethnography, which is nearing completion.

With the House of Music Hungary, the Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto has achieved great success: a forest of columns as a continuation of the surrounding park’s greenery. A curved roof with holes through which trees grow. Ceilings are decorated with thousands of stylised, shiny gold leaves.

Across the city modernity mixes with historic architectural styles and old socialist relics. City guide Peter Balogh calls it “a nice architectural chaos” and recalls: “Architecturally speaking, half of Budapest was built in the 19th century in only three decades and was determined by eclecticism. Everything was neo back then, be it neo-Renaissance or neo-Baroque.”

Budapest’s modern architecture does not always reveal its beauty at first sight. The Palace of Arts by architect Gabor Zoboki, near the National Theatre, is a concrete block from the outside, but is impressive on the inside with its concert hall and the Ludwig Art Museum. Plush red carpeting and runners have been laid throughout the interior of the building.