Mátra Museum at the foot of Kékes Hill
MúzeumCafé 8.
The Mátra Museum has been housed in the neo-Classical former Orczy Mansion in Gyöngyös for nearly half a century. The town purchased the building from the Orczy family in 1937 with the express purpose of creating a permanent home for the museum. Yet the history of the mansion in the past 70 years has been rather varied. For decades several organisations ‘rented’ it, though there was no responsible authority. Heves County Museum Directorate was granted the entire building for the purpose of a museum in 1984. Since then the Mátra Museum has gradually developed its permanent exhibitions which up to the end of 2005 had several million visitors. Preparatory activity preceding renovation began in 2000. Archaeological excavations took place in the park, and its dendrological stock and the mansion building were surveyed. The most spectacular new element of the 2.2 hectare park is a gloriette on an island in an approximately 800-square-metre lake. The park also features a Natural Science Pavilion, which houses the exhibition of the museum’s zoological and botanical collections. A 12-metre artificial tree stands in the centre and represents the levels of flora and fauna. The various soil, grass, shrub and foliage levels are shown in diorama around the tree. The nearly one million forint investment for the first stage has been co-financed by the EU in the framework of the Regional Development Operative Programme of the National Development Plan. The modernised mansion and the new exhibitions opened on 15 May 2007.