Two Royal Seats on a Common Path: Buda-Pest-Old Buda and Krakow
The Silver Rooster’s Golden Forint
What can the history of two royal cities have in common? In what way were medieval Krakow and Buda-Pest similar and in what way different? What kind of factors were needed for a city to assume a central role in a country’s life? How can the 600-year history of two cities be presented briefly but also clearly? How can museum specialists who have studied the past and ways of thinking in different universities come together such that neither would impose their own view of history? How can all this be presented in an appropriate manner for the public? Many questions have been raised in the past three years for the Budapest History Museum (BHM) and the Muzeum Historyczne Miasta Krakowa in the course of preparing a joint city history exhibition. In the end the exhibition itself aims to provide the answers, since the curators encountered a situation whereby – like the lives of the cities themselves – they had to adapt to a continuously forming transformation. The exhibition plans often had to be modified due to the problems involved with the loan of objects. The main theme of the display changed several times. What could be the cohesive force – medieval legends, narrative films, the chronology, the reigning dynasties or specialist themes? The ideas raised were successfully integrated into both the conception and the plans for the exhibition’s structure to create a unified, colourful effect. The exhibition is entitled On a Common Path, which aims to symbolically encapsulate the similarities and the occasional connections of the history of the cities – two paths, which sometimes met, at other times parted. The university teaching of medieval urban history and museum practice threw light on an interesting difference. Polish colleagues view their urban history in terms of eras, while Hungarians are inclined towards themes. It was necessary to fuse the two ways of thinking to make the joint work as smooth as possible. An increasingly refined picture slowly developed about the exhibition and this allowed the selection of objects to begin. In considering the exhibited Hungarian artworks, we aimed to select items which either very rarely or sometimes had never been seen by the public. As regards archaeological objects, we were in a relatively fortunate situation, since excavations of the past two decades had produced a wealth of new and beautiful finds for us to choose from. The objects in Budapest brought from Krakow could certainly be regarded as novelties. The exhibition, closing on 24 July is complemented with a three-language catalogue containing studies by staff members of the two museums as well as by other specialists.