For almost a generation now, the night of June 23 is no longer just the celebration of the summer solstice, the eve of midsummer night, which Shakespeare filled with a spell-binding love story in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This will be the 16th year when the doors of the museums open at night, while the almost half a million sleepless revellers have a bewildering choice of almost one thousand events. The 16th Night of Museums offers access to sites otherwise barred from visitors as well as concerts and other programmes in Budapest museums on the 23rd of June. This year’s central topic is linked to the Year of the Families, from a historical perspective, every museum has one or more prominent families around whose role and importance the museum itself revolves. On the other hand, the family is a unit that a museum can address: grandparents will teach their grandchildren, parents their children to not only look but also see.

Around 50 museums, exhibition halls and other venues welcome visitors with art, literature, gastronomy programmes and some folk heritage, many of them starting at in the afternoon (2pm). We are giving you just a hint of the programmes and recommend you to check out the official website, to mix and match your one-night stand as this would be definitely a magical night to remember.

• At Törley Collection & Visitor Center from 14.00 pm till 1.30 am you can visit the exhibition about the history of Törley sparkling wine cellar. You can find yourself inside of a sparkling wine cork after entering the exhibition room. Forwards the visitor is walking in into a Sparkling wine glass during making Törley’s past and present acquaintance.
• For the very first time, this year on the Museums’ Night Zwack Museum’s Unicum Cellar opens to the public. Get acquainted with production technology, discover the cellar labyrinth and their oldest and largest barrel. At the end of the tour taste the Unicum and Unicum Plum fresh from the barrel. Due to the tight capacity of the cellar, please book in advance on the spot. The tour is going to be in Hungarian but the tour guides do speak English. Feel free to join to a group.
• George Grüner, a well-known physicist living in Los Angeles, started collecting Hungarian art in the beginning of the 1990s. When selecting a new piece of art he mainly searches for progressive works, technical and formal innovation, and he always looks for experiments based on innovation and new observations interpreted artistically. The exhibition presents works from artists who share one common interest: searching for a connection between science and art and translating it mainly into geometric and abstract forms that fits the tradition based on the work of the world famous researcher-artist, Victor Vasarely, visit his namesake museum for this temporary exhibition!
• At the Holocaust Memorial Center, visitors can get to know the Jewish household and kitchen culture, hear about food and sweets related to religious holidays. Those who feel adventurous can taste and try to prepare the meals.
• After a decade of pure rock’n’roll march, Anna and the Barbies, a native of Budapest, started out of the undergound scenes from pubs and clubs, has been upraised to monumental stages by their fans. For this reason, the band has been given everything for ten years from night to night on stage. The orchestra, known for its psychedelic scenic world, and an unprecedentedly honest and soul-lifting, life-like world of texts, is playing an acoustic trio formation this evening in the National Gallery’s dome.

You can purchase armbands for the Night of Museums in participating museums, as well as in ticket offices of BKK (Budapest Transport Centre). Tickets are also available online at www.jegymester.hu. The adult armband costs 1700 HUF, the children armband (valid for children between the age of 6 and 18) costs 800 HUF, under the age of 6, the entrance is free. The armband allows access to all the programmes of the participating museums and other cultural institutions and entitles you to visit the permanent and temporary exhibitions as well. In addition, visitors with an armband can use the Museum buses. Night of Museums venues can easily be reached by MOL BUBI public bikes since there are docking stations near to almost all of the museums in the inner city. From 25th May to 23rd June, you can buy a discounted quarterly ‘Museum MOL Bubi’ pass for HUF 3900 (50% off) at BKK Customer Service Centres. From June 23, 2018, 6pm to June 24, 2:30am you can use the following bus lines operated by BKK free of charge using your wristband.

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