The Memento Park is an open-air museum in Budapest, dedicated to monumental statues from Hungary’s communist period (1949–1989). There are statues of Lenin, Marx and Engels, as well as Hungarian communist leaders such as Béla Kun, Endre Ságvári, or Árpád Szakasits.
The Memento Park, beyond its role as a tourist attraction, also functions as a cultural and educational site housing art projects, festivals, professional and public events. There are retro festivals, film festivals, and several cultural programmes.
For the youngest visitors, the park offers a museum-education programme that sheds light on the exhibits and helps students process what they learn.
Popular among tourists, the park is opened every day from 10 o’clock in the morning until sunset. It is accessible by public transportation as well as a direct bus.
After the fall of the communist regime in Hungary in 1989, many of the communist statues and monuments were immediately removed. On June 29, 1993, the second anniversary of the withdrawal of the Russian troops from Hungarian territory, the park celebrated a ribbon cutting and grand opening as a public outdoor museum.
2006 marks a new chapter in the history of the Memento Park. A life-sized copy of the tribune of the Stalin Monument in Budapest was built there, with the broken bronze shoes on top of the pedestal. This is not an accurate copy of the original, rather an artistic rendition by Ákos Eleőd.
The Stalin Monument in Budapest was completed in December 1951 as a “gift” to Joseph Stalin from the Hungarian nation on his seventieth birthday (December 21, 1949). It was torn down on October 23, 1956, by enraged anti-Soviet crowds during Hungary’s October Revolution.
The monument was erected on the edge of Városliget, the city park of Budapest. It was 25 metres tall in total. Stalin was portrayed as a speaker, standing tall and rigid with his right hand at his chest. The sides of the tribune on which he was standing were decorated with relief sculptures depicting Hungarians welcoming their leader.
The photo exhibition called “Stalin’s Boots” in the exhibition hall takes the viewer through the history of the 1956 revolution, of the 1989-1990 political changes and of the Memento Park itself – with both English and Hungarian captions.