Hungarian Parliament

The story

In 1882 Hungary held a competition for a new parliament on the Pest bank. Imre Steindl won with a Gothic design inspired by the Houses of Parliament in London, crowned with a Renaissance dome. Building began in 1885. It was opened for the thousandth year of Hungary in 1896 and finished in 1904.

Its numbers are a kind of poem. The dome is 96 metres high, and so is St Stephen's Basilica across town: the Magyars arrived in 896, and no building in the city may be taller. Inside are 691 rooms, about 20 kilometres of stairs, and some forty kilograms of gold leaf.

Steindl went blind before it was done and died in 1902, weeks before the first sitting.

What is here

Inside is seen only on a guided tour with a time and language, which covers the stair, the Dome Hall with the crown, a lobby and a chamber. The square, the river front and the Shoes on the Danube Bank are free and open at all hours.

If you have one minute

On the Buda bank, facing the river front

The best view of the Parliament is from the other side, from Batthyány tér or the Fisherman's Bastion. Count the spires along the roof. Look at the dome in the middle, and the two wings, one for each house of the old parliament.

Inside, the tour leads up the great stair to the Dome Hall, sixteen-sided, with statues of Hungarian rulers on the pillars. In the centre, under guard, lie the Holy Crown, the sceptre, the orb and the sword.

The crown's cross is bent. No one knows exactly when or how it happened. It has been on every coin and passport of Hungary since.

Things people often get wrong

"You can walk in." Only guided tours enter, booked for a time and a language.

"It is the biggest building in Hungary." It is the largest, and the tallest with the basilica, but it was built for a much bigger kingdom. After 1920 Hungary lost two-thirds of its land.

"The crown is old as Saint Stephen." Stephen was crowned in 1000. The crown that bears his name was made later, probably in the late 1100s, from Byzantine and Latin parts.

People who stood here

We searched Hungarian and English sources for this list.

• Imre Steindl (Hungarian architect, 1839–1902)He spent twenty years on the building and lost his sight. His statue stands by the south entrance.
• Lajos Kossuth (leader of the 1848 revolution)The square in front bears his name, and his statue stands on it. He died in exile in Turin in 1894 and never saw the building. In the United States he is remembered as a hero of liberty.
• Imre Nagy (prime minister of Hungary in 1953–55 and 1956)On the evening of 23 October 1956 he spoke to the crowd on the square from a window of this building. Two days later, on 25 October, Soviet and Hungarian forces fired on the people in the square. He was executed in 1958 and reburied with honours in 1989.
• Attila József (Hungarian poet, 1905–1937)His poem By the Danube begins with him sitting on the lowest stone of the quay. A bronze of him sitting so stood on the river steps beside the Parliament from 1980 until 2019, when it was moved to the Pest end of Margaret Bridge.
• Jimmy Carter (president of the United States)The crown was handed to the Americans in 1945 to keep it from the Soviets, and kept at Fort Knox. In January 1978 Carter returned it to Hungary. It came to this hall on 1 January 2000.

Go deeper: seven stops, from the river front to the shoes on the bank

The tour takes about 45 minutes, plus security. You see the stairs, the Dome Hall, a lobby and one of the old chambers. The rest you see from outside.

1. The river front

The building is symmetrical. The two halves were meant for the House of Representatives and the House of Magnates, the old upper house of nobles and bishops. Today Hungary has one house, and the southern chamber is used.

On the walls stand statues of Hungarian kings, princes and generals.

2. Kossuth Square

You enter from the land side, on Kossuth Square. Soldiers guard the main door and change every hour.

Under the square is a memorial to the dead of 25 October 1956. Bullet holes in the ministry across the square are marked with small metal balls.

3. The great stair

The ceremonial stair rises under painted vaults by Károly Lotz, gilded ribs and stained glass by Miksa Róth. It is lined with red carpet and leads straight to the dome.

4. The Dome Hall and the crown

The hall is used for state ceremonies. Look up into the dome: it is lit through stained glass, and its ribs meet at a star.

The crown, the sceptre, the orb and the sword lie in a glass case, guarded by two soldiers with drawn swords. Photographs of the crown are not allowed.

The crown has been stolen, buried and carried abroad many times. In 1440 a lady-in-waiting took it from Visegrád castle to crown a baby king. In 1849 it was buried in a field at the end of the revolution. In 1945 it went west, to the Americans.

5. The lobby and the cigar holders

Along the window sills of the lobby outside the old upper chamber are numbered brass holders. Members put down their cigars here before going in to speak; smoking was not allowed in the chamber. Guides tell a story about them, which is in the legends.

6. The chamber

The old upper chamber, a horseshoe of seats under a gilded ceiling, is shown when the house is not sitting. Members still debate in the southern chamber. Sittings are public, and visitors can watch from the gallery.

7. The shoes on the bank, and the same years in China

Walk three hundred metres south along the river. Sixty pairs of iron shoes stand at the edge of the bank. In the winter of 1944–45 men of the Arrow Cross militia shot Jews here, after making them take off their shoes, and let the river carry them away. The memorial was made by Can Togay and Gyula Pauer in 2005.

A rakodópart alsó kövén ültem, néztem, hogy úszik el a dinnyehéj.

I sat on the lowest stone of the quay and watched a melon rind float away.

Attila József, By the Danube (1936); our translation

Building began in 1885, the year China ended its war with France. When the house was finished in 1904, Russia and Japan were fighting over north-east China. In 1956, the year of the Hungarian uprising, China was holding its Eighth Party Congress.

In May 2019 a small sightseeing boat carrying Korean visitors sank in the river near Margaret Bridge after a cruise ship struck it at night. Twenty-seven people died, one is still missing. A memorial stands on the Pest bank by the bridge, and Korean visitors leave flowers there.