The Palace of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences [antikvár]

L THE HISTORY OF THE PALACE'S DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION "The beautiful palace of the Academy has a dual significance for us: on the one hand, it is the most successful building of our capital constructed in the third quarter of the 19th century; on the other, it is the earliest member of the long row of palaces which transformed Budapest, once humble and provincial, into one of the most beautiful cities of our age," said Károly Pulszky, the eminent art historian whose words of 1892 can still be applied to determine the standing of the palace in the architectural history and the townscape of Budapest. It is, therefore, worthwhile to provide for the guidance of today's visitor a description of the building and a short summary of the circumstances of its origin. The supreme governing body of Hungary's scientific life, the Academy of Sciences, was estabhshed in 1825, on pubhc initiative. During the first forty years of its existence it had no permanent home of its own. At the beginning it resided on the first floor of the Deron-, later Nákó-house which once occupied the site of today's Gresham-palace in Roosevelt Square. Later, it moved to the first and second floors of the Trattner-Károlyi-house in No. 3, Petőfi Sándor Street. Sessions were held in the County Hall and, after its completion, in the Ceremonial Hall of the Hungarian National Museum. It was only after the collapse of the 1848 Revolution, at the end of the 1850s, that conditions for the erection of an independent building were created for the Academy. The necessary funds were raised by the campaign relying on the national upsurge against absolutism. Then, as at the time of the foundation of the Academy, it was possible to move wide strata of society in support of Hungarian science. There were those who wanted to appropriate part of the new museum building for the purposes of the Academy, and others , who wanted to erect a new building on the corner of the museum site. Fortunately, both ideas were rejected and a decision was made to build an independent palace for the Academy. In 1859 Count Emil Dessewffy, the second president of the Academy, started a