Memento Park, Budapest

Abstract

After the 1990 change of the political system in Hungary the Budapest Municipal Council displayed about 40 statues from the former communist and socialist regime in a park. This paper aims at presenting the story of the park from the first idea up to now, giving a parallel analysis of the political intentions, cultural reactions and the changes in the architectural concept and realisation. The twenty-year history of the park is an example of the vague common memory: the way from the first laud opening of the place celebrating the recent change of the political system up to the inauguration of the second phase devoted to the memory of the uprising in 1956 remembered in the silence of candlelight.

Keywords

• political change, monuments, statue park, memorial architecture, post-modern irony