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To the left of Hosok tere stands the Museum of Fine Arts ( Szepmsveszeti Muzeum ; Tues-Sun 10am-5.30pm; 500Ft), the international equivalent of the Hungarian National Gallery, housed in an imposing Neoclassical pile completed in 1906. Although the majority of exhibits are now labelled in English, explanatory captions are few, so art lovers should invest in a catalogue or rent an audioguide (950Ft). On the lower ground floor there's an excellent art bookshop and some of the snazziest toilets in Budapest. Also on the lower ground floor is a small Egyptian Collection , chiefly from the Late Period and Greco-Roman eras, whose highlights are four huge painted coffins and a child-sized one, a mummified crocodile, cat and falcon, and a tautly poised bronze of the cat-goddess Bastet. The Twentieth-Century Art Collection across the way features few artists you're likely to have heard of but is nonetheless stimulating - look out for Chagall's Village in Blue in the Majovszky Hall, and Victor Vasarely's Op Art view of the Giza pyramids. While the Ionic Pyramid room features a changing selection of contemporary artists, the Doric Pyramid room hosts a superb collection of Gothic sculptures . On the ground floor, most visitors make a beeline for the Nineteenth-Century Art Collection , where the drama of Courbet's Wrestlers and the delight of Monet's Plum Trees in Blossom or Corot's Remembrance of Coubrou aren't sustained by weaker efforts by Manet, Cezanne and Toulouse-Lautrec. The hall at the end displays historical paintings like Nero on the Ruins of Rome , while Symbolist and Decadent pictures such as Franz von Stuck's The Kiss of the Sphinx adorn the last room. Don't spend long on the Mediterranean antiquities across the foyer, but check what's showing in the Prints and Drawings Room , where works by Raphael, Leonardo, Rembrandt, Rubens, Durer, Picasso and Chagall alternate with solo retrospective exhibitions. Upstairs are the Old Masters , many once owned by Count Miklos Esterhazy. The Spanish Collection of seventy works is perhaps the best in the world outside Spain, with seven El Grecos (most notably Christ Stripped of His Garments and The Agony in the Garden ) in Room XV, and five Goyas, several Murillos (including Ecce Homo ) and a Velasquez in Room XVI. The Italian Collection is almost as impressive, with Raphael's "Esterhazy Madonna" and portraits by Giorgione and Titian in Room XVIII, Veroneses and Tintorettos in Room XXIII. The German Collection contains Holbein's Dormition of the Virgin , Durer's Young Man and works by Altdorfer and Cranach the Elder, while Room XXI exhibits such artists as Canaletto, Tiepolo and Kauffmann. Whereas the Dutch Collection has such gems as Van Dyck's St John the Evangelist (Room B) and a whole room of fantastic Brueghels, the single room of English art can only muster a dull portrait apiece by Hogarth, Reynolds and Gainsborough.
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