Museum Quarter project soon gets under way

A tender for proposals to be submitted on the arrangement of the five new buildings of the Museum Quarter planned in Budapest City Park will be announced in the spring and an international tender for architectural plans will be invited in the second half of 2013, Laszlo Baan, who is in charge of the project, said at a press roundtable on Wednesday.

Under the concept, one of the new buildings will house the modern part of the merged collection of the Museum of Fine Arts and the Hungarian National Gallery. The Museum of Ethnography, the Hungarian Museum of Photography, the Ludwig Museum and the House of Hungarian Music will all be placed in the new building complex, Baan said.

As part of the concept of developing the 100-hectare City Park into a major family tourism destination of Europe, the Budapest Zoo would also be expanded, while the Budapest Circus will be moved to new premises, he said.

The entire development concept of the City Park is expected to be put before the government by April 30, he said.

Baan said earlier this month that the government would allocate 70 billion forints (EUR 240m) for the museum quarter project, 90 percent of which would come from EU funds, and private capital will also be involved. The project is planned to be completed by 2018.