Danube Museum
The Museum of Hungarian Water Management and Environmental Protection (Danube Museum) was founded in 1973.
The museum is located in Esztergom downtown, in a baroque building which was built in 1730 for as a capitulars building.
After the reconstruction the first exhibition opened in 1980. In 1998 the building was renovated and the exhibition has been renewed. With this new exhibition, Water-Time, the museum won the Museum of the Year award in 2001.
On April 1, 2018 the permanent exhibition closed. The new permanent exhibition opened on October 2019.
The Danube Museum was founded with the aim of collecting documents and objects related to the Hungarian water management, and to keep a record of the collection, and present it at exhibitions. With integrating general human, scientific and technical knowledge and showing different aspects of managing water and other natural resources we want to raise awareness of environmental and water responsibility in people. Beyond that the museum has control over the water monuments and small collections belong to the 12 territorial water directorates.
The collection is consider to be unique in Hungary. The documents and objects are classified into the following collection units: Repository, Audio collection, Medal collection, Postcards, Historical documents, Széchenyi’s documents, Object collection, Historical photo collection, Historical maps, Videos. The number of our collection is around 150 000 pieces now. We preserve rarities such as part of the economic correspondence of István Széchenyi, the original textbooks of our first national engineer school or the Cartographic Survey of the Danube published in 1726, made by Count Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, who was an Italian polyhistor.
The new permanent exhibition opened in autumn 2019. The main purpose of the new exhibition is to retain its old followers, guests, but also to reach out to new target groups. The condition of this is to provide an experience for the young adults. Learning with experience - a huge challenge that the Danube Museum's new permanent exhibition is trying to meet. The exhibition consists of various units; presents the past and present of water management, illustrates the use of water power. Visitors can learn more about river regulation, shipping, climate change and history of bathing. In a separate section we will present you different water innovations, the Lake Balaton, mineral waters and soda water.
The exhibition named VÍZEUM won the Exhibition of the Year Award 2020 and got the special prize of European Museums of the Year Award 2021.