Géza Gárdonyi Memorial House in Gárdony

The Géza Gárdonyi Memorial House is located in Agárd, Fejér County, a museum set up in the birthplace of Géza Gárdonyi. Alongside the Eger Géza Gárdonyi Memorial Museum, it is a significant Gárdonyi memorial site in the country.

History

Gárdonyi Géza – under the name Ziegler Géza – was born on August 3, 1863 and lived there until the age of eight months, until April 24, 1864, in the Nádasdy estate of Agárdpuszta. His father, Ziegler Sándor, had been working there as an estate mechanic since February 1862. The building is a long‑spined, plastered brick‑walled former thatched, now tiled roof servant’s house. The Nádasdy family originally intended it as a schoolhouse, which is why it was built of brick instead of adobe, but at the writer’s birth the estate’s servant “aristocracy”, the master craftsmen – mason, mechanic, blacksmith – inhabited the building. Each family had a three‑storey living unit; the three doors opening on the southern side each led to a separate room, which was closed off by a room with a curved floor and a vaulted furnace on either side. A single window pane for each room was also cut into the southern side of the building. The estate mechanic Ziegler’s family occupied the central living unit, where the future writer’s parents, paternal grandmother and two‑year‑old sister lived at the time of his birth.

After the writer's death, a red marble memorial plaque was placed on the building, and the memorial house was opened in 1988. In the interconnected rooms of the house, visitors can become acquainted with documents, photographs and memorabilia of the writer's life, and the descriptions placed on the walls bring Gárdonyi's life and work closer. In addition to the exhibition of literary-historical interest, the organizers also created a peasant kitchen furnished with period furniture and objects. The museum is open periodically, usually during the main tourist season. On the 150th anniversary of the writer's birth, in August 2013, the full‑length seated statue of the writer, a work by Kligl Sándor, was unveiled at the memorial house. On August 2, 2014, the memorial wall of twenty‑two Hungarian poets and writers from Fejér County and with ties to it was unveiled on the wall of the birthplace.

About 200 metres north of the memorial house, by the road, stands the Roman Catholic St. Anna Chapel, where the writer was christened. In the centre of Agárd, at the intersection of Balatoni út and Petőfi Sándor utca, a park contains one of the busts of Gárdonyi.