Construction of the new National Gallery in the City Park could start in a year or two

The Orbán government’s idea is that Budapest’s City Park could host a collection of the capital’s most prestigious museums. Several museums have already been built to realise this ambitious plan, and a new one, the National Gallery will be erected in a few years.

László Baán, the ministerial commissioner in charge of the Liget project, said at the exhibition of the project elements in the Hungarian pavilion of the Venice Architecture Biennale, that the works have already achieved significant results, but the biggest and most important development is yet to come: the construction of the new National Gallery, designed by the Pritzker Architecture Prize-winning Japanese company SANAA. This is what Liget Budapest’s new museum will look like – PHOTOS

As we wrote earlier, Budapest’s House of Music, designed by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, has been awarded the Architectural Design of the Year award in the US’ prestigious Architecture MasterPrize competition, details HERE.

This new museum could help to put the revamped City Park on the cultural map of Europe. […] Any newly planned cultural district will only receive international recognition if it can boast at least one high-standard contemporary art museum.

Bán said.

The details of the project, which already reached a three-fold cost increase by 2020 – from 26 to 73 billion euros – and which is now to be built with an unknown amount of money, are not yet disclosed.

At the beginning of February, the Municipality of Budapest informed our news portal that the procedure would be suspended for a maximum of 6 months from 7 January at the request of the builder, so the works are unlikely to start this year.

According to an MTI news report, Baán has now said:

if international economic conditions normalise – the global economy strengthens and the energy crisis eases – work could commence in 2024-2025.

Needless to say, this will require a final building permit, which has not yet been granted, according to the building authority database.

It is also interesting to note that the Budapest Mayor’s Office disagrees with the whole idea of the Liget project.