Babits Mihály Memorial House

From April 1 to October 31
From Wednesday to Sunday: from 10:00 to 18:00
Monday, Tuesday: CLOSED

Adult: HUF 1,200
Students and pensioners: HUF 600
Hungarian-language guided tour fee: HUF 6,000
Museum pedagogy fee: HUF 6,000
Prior telephone registration is required for museum educational sessions and guided tours.

The summer residence of Mihály Babits in Esztergom is a real gem, while exploring the memorial house, you may get the feeling that you could meet the poet at any moment in a corner of the house.
In 1924, the Babits family was able to purchase this small house on Fore hill (today Babits Hill) in Esztergom, which represents the past century true to the age and true to life. The originally one-room-kitchen cottage was expanded year by year, almost entirely the family moved here from Budapest in summer.
After the death of Mihály Babits, his widow, Sophie Török, no longer spent her summers here, the house became a “haunted house”. Later, several residents replaced each other, and the condition of the building deteriorated greatly. After it was restored, the Babits House was opened on August 4, 1961 as a memorial and museum that can be visited.
Mihály Babits got the idea for the famous signature wall in the memorial house from his friend, Ferenc Einczinger, one of Esztergom’s versatile artists, since the poet first immortalized his own autograph on the wall of his wine house.

A strict council was held with the Babits family about the fate of the signatures: whether it could remain on the wall or not. Some of the big names that can still be browsed today are: Dezső Kosztolányi, Frigyes Karinthy, Zsigmond Móricz, Miklós Radnóti, Árpád Tóth, Lőrinc Szabó, Gyula Illyés, Sándor Weöres.
Many of Babits’s works were created in Esztergom, the history and spirituality of the city are deeply felt in several of his poems. He also worked on the translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy in his beloved summer residence, for which he was awarded the San Remo Prize by the Italian state.