Budapest Statue Park
Gigantic Reminders of the Past

The Budapest Statue park museum will shad some light on what was going on behind the Iron Curtain. Buy a booklet on the spot (costs around 600 HUF/2.4 €) that will tell you the story behind each statue and helps you understand what you'll be seeing.

Address: corner of Balatoni út and Szabadkai utca in XXII. district
Tel: +36 1 425 7500

Opening Hours: every day from 10.00 till sunset

Admission: 600 HUF/2.4 €, free with Budapest Card.

Getting there
History of the Statue Park
Monuments in the Park
Souvenir Shop

Getting to Budapest Statue Park

You have two options to get to the park which is a bit out of the city centre.
If you're a first-time visitor to Budapest your best bet is to take the direct bus service to Budapest Statue Park. You can get to the park by public transport, if you're already familiar with travelling in Budapest.
If you aren't, on this page you can learn more about how to travel in Budapest by public transport.

Direct buses depart from Deák tér (where the 3 metro lines intersect) bus terminal in the city centre. Unfortunately the stop is not clearly visible from far, just skim through the schedules on the posts and look for the Statue Park logo and timetable.

Return ticket costs 2450 HUF/9.75 €. For students and for Budapest card holders it's 1950 HUF/7.8 €. Admission to the Statue Park museum is included in the price. You can buy your ticket on the bus. The whole visit including tarvelling there and back is less than 2 hours. The trip to the park takes about 30 minutes and you'll have 40 minutes to look around in the park before the bus returns back.

Departures of the direct buses:

January-February: 10.00

March-June: 10.00, 15.00

July-August: 10.00, 11.00, 15.00, 16.00

September-October: 10.00, 15.00

November-December: 10.00

Public transport: take bus No. 7 from the city centre and get off at Etele tér, from there take the yellow suburban bus operated by Volánbusz (Hungary's national coach service) departing from the stalls No. 2-3. The bus goes to Érd-Diósd, small towns in the outskirts of Budapest. The journey takes about 15 minutes.

By car: I recommend driving to the Statue Park only for those who know Budapest very well and don't mind traffic jams and roads full with potholes (especially in winter).

The park lies along road No. 7. From the city centre you have to get to Budaörsi road. Coming from the M0 motorway you have to turn off at Diósd onto road No. 7 and drive 5 kms towards Budapest until you get to the Statue Park.
Read about car rental in Budapest.

A bit of Budapest Statue Park History

The future of the statues created in the communist regime caused heated debates after the political changes of 1989/90. Many people reacted with hatred and wanted to destroy the symbols of dictatorship.

Instead of demolishing the stone and bronze reminders of the past 40 years, leaders of the new, democratic political system decided to remove and gather the statues to a place where everybody can view them.

László Szörényi a literary historian mentioned first the idea of Statue Park in an article in 1989. In December 1991 the Assembly of Budapest came to a decision that each districts should choose individually the statues to be removed.

The Cultural Committee of the Assembly invited a tender regarding the placement of statues and the design of the Statue Park. Ákos Eleőd architect's (Architectural Studio Vadász and Partners) tender won.

The XXII. district offered a place on Tétényi plane for establishing the park. Altough the museum has not yet been completed until now it opened in autumn 1993.

A continuous brick wall is needed to create a uniform setting for the statues. Some other establishments to provid for the visitors have not been built either. Despite these deficiencies thousands of foreigners and Hungarians visit the Budapest Statue Park every year.

Monuments in Budapest Statue Park

You can meet some major communist top dogs in this opendair museum like Lenin, Marx and Engels and their Hungarian equivalents. The system rigorously censored everything.

In communism artworks could existed and displayed if they supported the ideology of the regime. Gigantic statues of hard-working men and women, heroic soldiers stand here abandoned and evoking memories of fake glory.

There were two kinds of people in those grim years: leaders of the system possessing unquestionable authority and the faceless mass of people. (Actually a third type existed too, the resistants who either expressed their antipathy against the dictatorship or just bore in silence.) That is what these statues represent.

The park consists of five semicircles, with six statues standing along each. The semicircles encompass a larger circle. The exhibited items range from giant statues of workers, heroes and party leaders to plaques commemorating certain communist events.

Standing next to these massive monuments one can feel really intimidated. I think that was one of their main purposes towering above everybody at their original places. Now they're only a bunch of mementos of a bleak past.

Souvenir Shop in Budapest Statue Park

How ironic that capitalism, against what the communists fought so fiercely, is thriving now in the small souvenir shop in front of the eyes of the stony remains of Soviet regime.
In the shop you can buy all kinds of communist kitsch. For example you can get the last breath of communism in a small can or a candle in the shape of Lenin.

Other gifts you can take home:

• various badges,
• T-shirts,
• flasks with hammer and sickle symbols
• communist marching music on Cds
• postcards

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Related Pages from our Website

See more Budapest Museums on this page.

See our overview of Budapest Parks.

Return from Budapest Statue Park to Budapest Sightseeing or
Homepage of Budapest Tourist Guide.