Ludwig Museum

The museum is open to visitors every day of the week, except Mondays, and you can now enter the exhibitions for free with the Budapest Card.

The founder of the Ludwig Museum in Budapest, also known as the Museum of Contemporary Art, the German couple, Irene and Peter Ludwig, had more than 12,000 works of art. The institution was named after them. Their collection included masterpieces from the time of antiquity to contemporary art. The gifts and borrowings from the collection can be seen in 30 museums around the world, 12 of them bearing the names of the couple, including institutions in Budapest, Cologne, Vienna and Beijing.

The Ludwig Museum was founded in 1989, after the foundation it was established in Hungary in 1987. 70 high-value international works of art were donated to the Budapest institution and 95 works were deposited, with which the international collection of the museum was created and at the same time the first museum of contemporary art in Hungary became available to the public. The first permanent exhibition of the new museum was opened in 1991 in the ‘A’ Building of the Budavár Palace, organized by the Hungarian National Gallery. The museum was transformed into the Museum of Contemporary Art in 1996 and has grown with significant Hungarian material.

The mission of the institution is to achieve the highest level of professionalism in the research, collection, presentation and promotion of contemporary art; they are open to new ideas and visions; diversity in terms of the artists, works, programs and co-arts presented.