Budapest's Archive of Two Dictatorships

At a Glance

The House of Terror (Terror Háza) sits at Andrássy Avenue 60 in Budapest, on the exact site used first by Hungary's Arrow Cross Party (fascist, 1944) and then by the Communist secret police ÁVH (1945–56). The building itself is the exhibit: the museum preserves the cells, offices, and corridors where thousands of Hungarians were detained, tortured, and killed, and reads them as a record of two 20th-century dictatorships.

Architecture & History

Built in 1880 as a bourgeois apartment block, the building became Arrow Cross headquarters in 1937 and, after 1945, ÁVO/ÁVH's interrogation centre until just before the 1956 Revolution. A public foundation opened the museum on 24 February 2002 with a renovation by architect Attila F. Kovács. The black cornice ringing the roof carries the 3.7-metre letters "TERROR," casting a shadow across the façade at sunset—the museum's unmistakable icon.

What to See

• Soviet T-54 tank in the central atrium, its back wall fully covered with victims' photographs.
• Arrow Cross galleries on 1944 and the Budapest ghetto.
• Gulag and deportation rooms, with survivor interviews on loop.
• Reconstructed basement cells—solitary rooms, a water-torture chamber, and the execution room. The elevator descent itself is part of the exhibit; consider seeing it last if you need to pace yourself emotionally.
• 1956 Revolution and reburial room, covering Imre Nagy's trial and his 1989 reburial.

Visiting Tips

Take M1 (yellow line) to Vörösmarty utca, then a five-minute walk down Andrássy. Allow 2–3 hours. Audio guides come in English, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and Hungarian, with English captions throughout. Plan a visit in the morning, then decompress with a coffee on Andrássy—the Hungarian State Opera House and Liszt Ferenc Academy are on the same street for a gentler second half of the day.