This beautiful old building on the banks of the Danube could easily be mistaken for a theater or a museum. Meanwhile, it is Hungary's top scientific institution! Although, besides official offices, inside there is a large concert hall, conference rooms, and a library containing valuable scholarly works.
The building's facades are adorned with numerous sculptures symbolizing various sciences. For example, above the central entrance there are statues dedicated to mathematics, natural sciences, history, law, philosophy, and linguistics. And on the second facade facing the Danube, there are allegorical images of archaeology, poetry, and astronomy.
At the corners of the building there are also figures – these are statues of famous scientists. In particular, one of them is dedicated to Rene Descartes – the French mathematician, physicist, and natural philosopher. These sculptures were created by Emil Wolf and Miklos Izso.
If you manage to get inside the Academy, pay attention to the paintings hanging in the assembly hall. They were painted by the Hungarian artist Karoly Lotz, who also decorated the walls of Tihany Abbey. His works can also be seen in the building of the Hungarian Parliament, the Ethnographic Museum, the Museum of Applied Arts, the opera house, and many other notable buildings in Budapest.
