Holocaust Memorial Center Budapest: Planning a Visit to Páva Street

In the courtyard of the Holocaust Memorial Center on Páva utca, an eight-meter glass wall has room for half a million names, and about 180,000 are engraved on it so far. The blank plates are kept for victims who will stay nameless, and a family name looked up inside can then be found on the glass.

The Tower of Lost Communities lists 1,441 places across Hungary whose Jewish life ended with the 1944 deportations. Below street level, the permanent exhibition “From Deprivation of Rights to Genocide” shows what was taken from Hungary’s Jews and Roma, rights first, then property, liberty, dignity and life, from the anti-Jewish laws of 1938 through the German occupation of 1944, on a floor built to slope downhill. The route ends in the restored Páva Street synagogue of 1924, an internment camp in 1944 and 1945, where glass chairs carry the names of murdered community members. Allow about two hours, and pair it with the Dohány Street Synagogue in the morning, about 25 minutes away on foot. The center recommends the exhibition for visitors over 12. Plan around Saturday: the center is closed that day, and so is the Dohány.

The center (Holokauszt Emlékközpont) is at Páva utca 39 in District IX and opens Sunday to Friday, 10:00 to 18:00, with the ticket office closing at 17:00. An adult ticket costs 3,600 HUF (about $11), and the courtyard memorials need no ticket.

Photo: Takkk, CC BY-SA 3.0, resized, via Wikimedia Commons.

📋 At a Glance

📍 Where	Páva utca 39, 1094 Budapest (District IX, Ferencváros)
🕙 Open	Sunday to Friday, 10:00 to 18:00. Ticket office closes at 17:00. Closed on Saturdays
🎟️ Adult ticket	3,600 HUF (about $11) for the permanent exhibition; 4,000 HUF with the temporary show
🆓 Free	The courtyard wall of names and the Tower of Lost Communities, always. Everything on 15 March, 20 August and 23 October
⏱️ Time needed	About two hours
🚇 Nearest stop	Corvin-negyed, metro M3 and trams 4 and 6, then a five to seven minute walk
👧 Age	Recommended for over-12s (the English ticket page says 14)

What you walk through, in order

The courtyard comes first, and it is free. You enter from Páva utca into an inner courtyard where two memorials stand outside the ticket line. The Memorial Wall of Victims is an eight-meter glass wall designed by graphic artist László Zsótér, with room for half a million names. About 180,000 identified victims are on it so far, and the empty name plates among them stand for the people who will never be identified. At the center you can search the database for a relative and get a sheet showing where the name sits on the wall.

The glass hall you pass through on the way down is the Tower of Lost Communities: 1,441 towns and villages whose Jewish communities ceased to exist after the 1944 deportations, written on twelve panes. It is the line from the provincial towns to the city, and it is worth reading slowly before you go below.

Photo: Globetrotter19, CC BY-SA 4.0, resized, via Wikimedia Commons.

Then the permanent exhibition, underground. “From Deprivation of Rights to Genocide” fills 1,500 square meters below street level. It does not run by date. It runs by what was taken: rights, then property, then liberty, then dignity, then life, starting from the first anti-Jewish laws of 1938 and accelerating after the German occupation of 1944. It tells the story of the Jews and of the Roma, and family stories run along a wall that circles the whole route. Architect István Mányi built the floor on a slope and tilted the pillars, so the rooms literally take you downhill.

And it ends in the synagogue. The stairs from the last room climb into the Páva Street synagogue, designed by Lipót Baumhorn and inaugurated on 6 January 1924. In 1944 and 1945 it was used as an internment camp. Restoration began in 2003, the center opened here in 2004, and on the ground floor glass chairs carry the names of community members who were killed. It is quiet, light after the dark rooms, and a good place to sit for a few minutes before you go back out into the street.

Photo: יעקב, CC0, resized, via Wikimedia Commons.

Tickets, reduced rates and the free days

Ticket	Adult	Reduced
Permanent exhibition	3,600 HUF (about $11)	1,600 HUF (about $5)
Temporary exhibition only	1,500 HUF (about $5)	750 HUF (about $2)
Combined, permanent and temporary	4,000 HUF (about $12)	2,000 HUF (about $6)

Prices are in HUF, which is what you pay at the ticket desk or online. Converted at 1 USD = 323 HUF, the ECB reference rate on 16 October 2026. Rates move, so treat the converted figures as indicative.

The reduced rate is for EEA citizens under 26 or over 62, and for up to two adults accompanying at least two under-18s. Free entry for EEA citizens covers children under 6, people over 70, visitors with a disability plus one companion, and teachers in public education. On the last Sunday of every month, EEA citizens under 26 get in free, as do under-18s with up to two accompanying adults.

On Hungary’s three national holidays, 15 March, 20 August and 23 October, entry is free for everyone, whatever passport you hold. In 2026, 23 October falls on a Friday, and the center has confirmed it will be open that day.

You can pay in cash, by card or online through the ticket link on the center’s own site. Groups of ten or more pay 2,550 HUF per person for the permanent exhibition.

Source: Holocaust Memorial Center ticket page and Hungarian ticket page, prices, discounts and payment checked 17 October 2026.

Opening hours, and the Saturday rule

The exhibitions are open Sunday to Friday, 10:00 to 18:00. The ticket office closes at 17:00, and the center is closed every Saturday.

On top of that, the center closes on a handful of extra days, which it posts on its news page rather than on the opening-hours page. In autumn 2026 there were seven: five in September and 3 and 4 October. Before you cross town, look at the center’s news page for the latest notice.

The Saturday closure is the one that wrecks plans, because the Dohány Street Synagogue is shut on Saturdays as well. If your trip runs Friday to Sunday, Sunday is the day for Jewish Budapest.

The flip side: the center is open on Mondays, when much of Budapest’s museum list is closed.

Source: opening hours and the autumn 2026 closure notice on hdke.hu, checked 17 October 2026.

How long it takes, and how heavy it is

Allow two hours. The exhibition is built from text, documents, photographs and film rather than objects in cases, and the reading takes time. Arrive by 16:00 at the latest; a 17:00 ticket buys you an hour, which is not enough.

The rooms are dark on purpose, and a few captions are harder to read for it.

It does not soften anything. Original film and photographs of deportation and murder are shown as they are. The center recommends the permanent exhibition for visitors over 12, and its English ticket page says it is not recommended under 14. With a teenager, talk about what you are going to see before you go down.

Pace yourself. The exhibition is long and relentless, and it is a lot to take in at one go. Take the first rooms slowly, accept that you will skim some of the later ones, and use the synagogue at the end as the pause it was designed to be.

Guided tours and the city walk

The center’s guided tours are booked for groups, in advance, through its education team. A 90-minute tour of the permanent exhibition costs 9,400 HUF per group in English, French, German, Italian or Russian, and 6,900 HUF per group in Hungarian, on top of the entry tickets. Only the center’s own guides may lead tours inside its exhibitions, so an outside walking-tour guide will leave you at the door.

The center also runs a 120-minute walk through the old Jewish Quarter that starts in front of the Dohány Street Synagogue and covers the surviving traces of the Pest ghetto. It runs from April to October, weather permitting, needs at least five people and costs 15,600 HUF per group. Booking details are on the ticket page.

Source: tour prices and booking rules from the center’s ticket page and guided tours page, checked 17 October 2026.

Dress and conduct

This is a memorial with a synagogue at its heart, and it reads best that way. Dress as you would for a house of worship: covered shoulders are the safe choice, especially for the synagogue hall. Keep your voice down in the rooms, put the phone on silent, and give people at the wall of names their space; some of them are there for a relative.

The Dohány Street Synagogue, which you may pair with this visit, has written rules: a security check at the entrance, no backpacks larger than hand luggage, a kippah for men, and no sleeveless tops, short skirts or shorts.

Getting there

From	Route	Then
Deák Ferenc tér	Metro M3, three stops to Corvin-negyed	Five to seven minutes on foot
Blaha Lujza tér	Tram 4 or 6, three stops to Corvin-negyed	Five to seven minutes on foot
Dohány Street Synagogue	On foot, about 2 km	About 25 minutes

A single BKK ticket is 500 HUF; buy it before you board. If you drive, the center points you to parking on Liliom utca or at the nearby Corvin shopping mall.

Source: routes from the center’s visitor page and contacts page; stop sequences from BKK’s published timetable data; fares from bkk.hu, checked 17 October 2026. Walking times are our estimate from OpenStreetMap.

A day of Jewish Budapest, Sunday to Friday

The three places in this plan are close enough for one day, provided it is not a Saturday.

Place	Open	Entry
Dohány Street Synagogue and the Hungarian Jewish Museum	Sun to Thu 10:00 to 18:00, Fri to 16:00 in October; from 2 November Sun to Thu 10:00 to 16:00, Fri to 14:00; closed Saturdays and 1 November	Ticket; see our Dohány guide
Holocaust Memorial Center	Sun to Fri 10:00 to 18:00, tickets until 17:00; closed Saturdays	3,600 HUF
Shoes on the Danube Bank	Open-air memorial on the Pest embankment	Free

Morning: the Dohány. Be at the door when it opens at 10:00. The ticket also covers the Hungarian Jewish Museum, which is part of the same complex at Wesselényi utca 7, on the second floor. Its permanent exhibition opened in 1984, and a multilingual audio guide is available free at the exhibition’s reception desk. Last entry to the Dohány is an hour before closing.

Lunch in the Jewish Quarter. The streets behind the synagogue are where to eat; our kosher and Jewish food guide sorts the certified kitchens from the places that only cook the dishes.

Afternoon: Páva utca. Walk south for about 25 minutes, or take metro M2 one stop from Astoria to Blaha Lujza tér and tram 4 or 6 three stops to Corvin-negyed. Aim to be inside by 14:30, which leaves time for the full two hours before the 18:00 close.

Evening: the river. From Corvin-negyed, take M3 to Deák Ferenc tér and change to M2 for one stop to Kossuth Lajos tér. The Shoes on the Danube Bank are a short walk south along the embankment. After a museum built from documents, sixty pairs of iron shoes say the same thing in a single image.

On a Friday, keep the same order and do not let the morning slip: the Dohány closes at 16:00 in October and at 14:00 from November, while Páva utca stays open until 18:00.

For the decades that followed, the House of Terror on Andrássy út covers both of Hungary’s twentieth-century dictatorships. It is a different museum with a different argument, and it works better on another day than squeezed in after this one.

Hungarian Jewish Museum, Dohány hours and visitor rules read on jewishtourhungary.com, its opening-hours page and visitor information on 17 October 2026. Exhibition, building, synagogue, memorial wall and tower details from the center’s pages on the permanent exhibition, exhibition hall, synagogue, Memorial Wall of Victims, Tower of Lost Communities and its Hungarian FAQ, all read on 17 October 2026.