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Most people's first port of call is the Hungarian National Gallery ( Magyar Nemzeti Galeria ; Tues-Sun 10am-6pm; 500Ft), devoted to Hungarian art from the Middle Ages to the present. It contains much that's superb, but the vastness of the collection and the confusing layout can be fatiguing. Though all the paintings are labelled in English, other details are scanty, so it's worth investing in a guidebook, audioguide (950Ft) or guided tour (1300Ft for up to five people; tel 0660 559955). The main entrance is on the eastern side of Wing C, overlooking the river, behind the statue of Eugene of Savoy. Don't buy a special ticket (300Ft) to see the separate Habsburg crypt until you've checked that a tour is scheduled, as they require at least 25 people. The crypt contains the tombs of several Habsburgs who ruled as Palatine, or viceroy, of Hungary up until 1849. On the ground floor of the museum, marble reliefs of Beatrice and Matyas and a wooden ceiling from a sixteenth-century church are the highlights of a Medieval and Renaissance Lapidarium , which you need to pass through to reach the fantastic collection of fifteenth-century Gothic altarpieces at the rear of Wing D. Notice the varied reactions to the Death of the Virgin from Kassa and the gloating spectators in the Janosret Passion . From the same church comes a St Nicholas altar as long as a limo and lurid as a comic strip. The pointed finials on the high altar from Liptoszentmaria anticipate the winged altarpieces of the sixteenth century on the floor above. To get there without returning to the foyer, use the small staircase near the altarpieces and turn left, left and left again at the top. The first floor picks up where downstairs left off by displaying late Gothic altarpieces with soaring pinnacles. Much of the Baroque art in the adjacent section once belonged to Prince Miklos Esterhazy or was confiscated from private owners in the 1950s. Don't miss Adam Manyoki's portrait of Ferenc Rakoczi II, a sober look at a national hero that foreshadowed a whole artistic genre in the nineteenth century. This and other National Historical art fills the central block, where you'll be confronted by two vast canvases as you come up the staircase: Zrinyi's Sortie by Peter Krafft depicting the suicidal sally of the defenders of Szigetvar, and the Reoccupying of Buda Castle by Gyula Benczur. In Wing B, Benczur's The Baptism of Vajk portrays St Stephen's conversion to Christianity, while Bertalan Szekely's Recovering the Corpse of Louis II depicts the aftermath of the catastrophic defeat at Mohacs. The rest of Wing B covers other trends in nineteenth-century art, with sections devoted to Mihaly Munkacsy and Laszlo Paal - exhibited together since both painted landscapes, though Paal did little else whereas Munkacsy was internationally renowned for pictures with a social message - and Pal Szinyei Merse , the "father of Hungarian Impressionism", whose models and subjects were cheerfully bourgeois. Walking upstairs to the second floor , you come face to face with three huge canvases by the visionary artist Tivadar Kosztka Csontvary , whose obsession with the Holy Land and the "path of the sun" inspired scenes like Look Down on the Dead Sea and Ruins of the Greek Theatre at Taormina . When Picasso saw an exhibition of his works years later, he remarked: "And I thought I was the only great painter of our century." There are six more, smaller Csontvarys amongst the twentieth-century art in Wing D, which is largely attributable to members of the Godollo and Nagybanya artists' colonies. The chief exponent of Art Nouveau in Hungary was Jozsef Rippl-Ronai , whose portraits were little recognized in his lifetime but are now regarded as classics. Other trends such as Post-Impressionism are represented by works like Odon Marffy's Cezanne-like The Old Toll House at Vac , but there's less abstract art than you'd expect from the 1930s and 1940s. Since all the Socialist art was evicted in the 1990s, the third floor has been used for temporary exhibitions of graphics or photos by Hungarian artists.
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