Beregi Museum

The Beregi Museum is the local history and ethnographic museum of Vásárosnamény and its surroundings.

History of the museum

The founder of the Beregi Museum was the Reformed pastor Csiszár Árpád in 1963. Until 1975 he was the part‑time director and the only employee. Only in 1975 did the staff expand with two part‑time cleaning‑caretakers and Sarolta Felhősné Csiszár, a museologist, who then led the museum from 1978 to 2011. Since 2011, ethnographer and museologist János Varga has been the head of the institution.

The museum’s collecting area extends over the Vásárosnamény district. The material objects already exceed 70 000 pieces, of which more than 13 000 are ethnographic, including a separate unit of a textile collection of more than 3 000 items, an authentic embroidered‑egg collection of nearly 800 items, a ceramic collection of about 700 items, and a household and artistic iron‑casting collection of several hundred items. The archaeological collection inventory lists 18 000 units.

The museum’s historical document archive contains more than 12 000 entries, highlighted by the material on elementary folk schools. The institution’s staff continuously work on digitising the collections and making them accessible.

Since 1971 the collection was housed in the Máthé manor at 13 Rákóczi Street. Since 2007 the museum’s main building has been the Tomcsányi Castle, renovated with EU funding. In 2021 only this building was open to visitors, while the Máthé manor awaits renovation.

In the Baroque main building visitors are welcomed by an exhibition series consisting of eight units equipped with modern technical devices and a visual storage room. The exhibitions each provide a comprehensive picture of a particular theme.

Tomcsányi Castle

The castle was built in 1728 by László Lónyay. The ancestors of the Lónyay family settled in the region at the time of the Hungarian conquest. From the early 14th century they already owned estates in Vásárosnamény. At the site of the present castle, on Castle Hill, they already had a residence at that time. The building’s current Baroque form was established by his son, who expanded the structure with two corner rooms and an arcade tower. The two rear corner rooms were added toward the end of the 18th century.

In the middle of the 19th century the castle was inherited on the female line by the Tomcsányi family. Tomcsányi Vilmos Pál went to Vásárosnamény after Trianon. Between 1920 and 1923 he was foreign affairs state secretary, then minister of justice. His wife worked hard for the development of the Bereg domestic industry. The Tomcsányi family used the castle until its nationalization.

From 1945 a military auxiliary command operated in it, and from 1954 a secondary school dormitory was established here until 1986, when the new dormitory was built. Afterwards the building stood empty until 2005. Its utilization was advocated by Tomcsányi Pál, a Széchenyi‑award‑winning academic, who spent most of his youth in Vásárosnamény and who, from the early 1980s, was a returning guest of the city. The building was finally renovated with European Union support.