Duna múzeum

The Hungarian Museum of Environment and Water Management, classified as a national specialized museum, has a collection scope that includes objects, documents, and audiovisual materials related to the history of Hungarian water affairs and water management. The institution has been maintained by the National Water Management Directorate since January 1, 2014.

The museum welcomes its visitors and researchers interested in water history in the old town of Esztergom, in the former chief chaplaincy building. It offers an average of 20,000 visitors per year the opportunity to encounter water and to acquire playful knowledge about water.

Background

The collection history of the Hungarian Museum of Environment and Water Management dates back to the centennial exhibition of 1896. This exhibition first provided the opportunity for domestic river regulation and flood control to be presented to the public in a separate pavilion.

A large part of the gathered material was removed by the participating organizations after the exhibition closed, while some of the materials of the state water authorities (river and cultural engineering offices, hydrographic service, various water construction departments, etc.) were transferred to the collection of the Agricultural Museum founded at that time.

In the early 1930s, the head of the Water Engineering Department of the Ministry of Land Cultivation, Elemér Sajó (1875-1934), arranged for the Hydrographic Institute to collect those maps and technical documents that, besides their historical value, contain useful information. Thus the (in-house) Museum of the Hydrographic Institute was formed, which also received water‑related museum materials from the Agricultural Museum. World War II caused great damage to the Hydrographic Institute’s museum material, and a significant part of the collection was destroyed and scattered.

Founding and Subsequent Period

Imre Dégen (1910-1976), the influential head of water services between 1955 and 1975 and president of the National Water Management Office (OVH), initiated the creation of water‑related specialist collections (library, archive, museum) in the late 1960s, as water scientific research required the collection and analysis of historical data more than any other field. In 1968 the Water Documentation and Information Office (VIZDOK) was established, with one of its tasks being the operation of the water specialist library, as well as the organization of the Museum and Archive Department. Finally, the Hungarian Water Museum was officially founded in 1973 as part of VIZDOK. Since 1989 it has borne the name Hungarian Museum of Environment and Water Management. In the early 1990s, for the sake of public understanding, it adopted the name Danube Museum, which is still used today but is not official.

After its founding the museum had no permanent exhibition, the collections were housed in a rented building on the Danube bank in Budapest. The first permanent exhibition finally opened in 1980 in the city centre of Esztergom, in the so‑called Káptalan‑ház building. In 1998, because of the building’s restoration, the exhibition was dismantled. The innovative new permanent exhibition designed for the renewed interior spaces, titled Water‑Time, welcomed visitors from October 2001. The new exhibition received numerous recognitions in the following years. In addition to the Museum of the Year (2001) and the Family‑Friendly Museum (2005) awards, the institution also received the European Museum Forum special prize in 2003.

For preschool and school groups the institution offers varied museum‑education programmes; in 2010, with European Union funding, a new activity room was created, and in 2014 its new permanent exhibition unit, the Látványtár, opened.

The permanent exhibition opened in 2001 served visitors for nearly two decades; in 2018 it was dismantled so that the following year it could be replaced by the permanent exhibition now called Vízeum, which was awarded Exhibition of the Year in 2020 and received the special prize of the European Museum of the Year Award in May 2021. Thus the institution – uniquely among Hungarian museums – has now received this prestigious international award twice.

Building History

In Esztergom the present Petőfi Street was once an old Roman and medieval road, around which Armenians settled in the Árpád era. Their settlement was called Villa Érmen. As a result of the Tatar invasion the small Armenian village was destroyed, and the area passed into the possession of the Hungarian kings, who donated it to the Order of Saint Augustine monks. Christians settled around the thus created ecclesiastical centre, building a church and a large monastery in honour of Saint Anna. Before the Turkish rule the area was named the Saint Anna district after the monastery.

During the Turkish occupation the settlement here was destroyed again, and at the end of the 17th century the village then called Zsember (Sember) was formed on its ruins. After the expulsion of the Turks, when the Esztergom chapter regained its property, settlement began here. In the period between Esztergom’s recapture from the Turks and the archbishopric’s return, the chapter’s affairs were handled by canons. Most likely a canon of Esztergom in the 1730s had the chapter house built.

The building is mainly remembered in literature because on February 20, 1790 the Hungarian royal crown and the coronation regalia spent a night here. This day – like the four days of the crown’s journey from Vienna to Buda throughout the country – was among the most memorable for the town.

The building functioned until the end of the First World War as the economic and legal centre of the Esztergom chapter. A few years after the war, due to the loss of property caused by the sequestration, it no longer made sense to maintain such a large building for this purpose, so the chapter decided to hand over the floor to its former lawyer, Lajos Mike, as a residence, in exchange for his renouncing the entitlement to the chapter’s revenues.

From the mid‑1950s the building belonged to the Pilis Forestry. More than 20 years later, in 1976, water management took it over, and after the building’s restoration the first exhibition of the Danube Museum opened in Esztergom in 1980.