Heroes’ Square closes the far end of Andrássy Avenue with the Millennium Monument: a 36-metre Corinthian column, the seven chieftains who led the Magyars into the Carpathian Basin cast in bronze at its foot, and fourteen Hungarian rulers standing in two quarter-circle colonnades behind. It is a national memorial site, it is part of the Andrássy Avenue World Heritage site, and it costs nothing at any hour.
The Archangel Gabriel is not on the column, which surprises anyone who has seen a photograph of the place. The statue came down at the end of 2024 for a full restoration, and there is a free, full-size replica of it about 6 minutes away in the City Park Visitor Centre, in the Museum of Ethnography’s wing on the Heroes’ Square side.
- Visit length
- 30 to 45 minutes for the square
- Entry
- Free, no ticket and no gate
- Book ahead
- Nothing to book. A guided walk can be
- Best time
- Early morning, or after dark for the lighting
- Nearest stop
- Metro M1 Hősök tereAbout 4 minutes, and the station is stairs only
- Accessibility
- Flat and paved throughout. The M1 is stairs only
- Statues
- 14 rulers, 7 chieftains, 4 groups
- Shade
- None. The square is open stone
- Beside it
- Museum of Fine Arts and the Kunsthalle
Highlights
The Millennium Monument
A 36-metre column at the centre of the square, with Prince Árpád leading the six other chieftains on horseback around its base.
Fourteen rulers in two colonnades
Seven figures in each quarter circle, from Stephen I to Lajos Kossuth, with the chariots of War and Peace on the two inner ends.
The Heroes’ Memorial Stone
The railed slab in front of the monument that stands for the tomb of the unknown soldier, and holds no remains.
Plan your visit
Opening hours
Heroes’ Square has no opening hours. There is no gate, no barrier and no ticket desk, so you can walk onto it at any hour, and a lot of people come after dark, when the monument and both museum facades are floodlit.
What does keep hours is everything around it. The Museum of Fine Arts and the Kunsthalle are both shut on Mondays and both publish their own times. The City Park Visitor Centre, which holds the Gabriel replica, does not publish its hours online, so make that a daytime visit.
Parts of the square are fenced off for state commemorations on a handful of days a year. The national days, 15 March, 20 August and 23 October, and the Hungarian Heroes’ Memorial Day on the last Sunday in May are the likeliest. Nothing needs booking and nothing needs planning round it.
Getting there
The Millennium Underground, M1, runs the whole length of Andrássy Avenue and surfaces at Hősök tere, about 4 minutes from the monument. It is the fastest way here from anywhere in central Pest, and it is stairs only.
Nearest stops
By car: there is no car park at the square and the streets round it are metered. Come by metro or bus.
See our complete guide on how to get there for every route, the walk down Andrássy Avenue, the hop-on hop-off stop and the step-free way in.
Before you go
- There is no shade and no shelter anywhere on the square. A hat in summer, something windproof in winter
- The Heroes’ Memorial Stone is railed, and it is the one part of the square nobody walks across
- Nothing is sold and nothing is booked. The square is free at every hour, and the only tickets in the area belong to the two museums
- The paving is smooth stone and it gets slippery in the wet
- Dózsa György út crosses the front of the square with traffic on it
- The nearest free indoor place is the City Park Visitor Centre, about 6 minutes away, which is also where the Gabriel replica is
Accessibility
The square itself is about as easy as anywhere in Budapest. Getting to it is the part that needs thought.
- Flat, paved and step-free across its whole area, with all four approaches coming in level
- The Millennium Underground is not step-free. Hősök tere station is stairs only, and BKK lists no step-free access anywhere on the M1
- Come by bus or trolleybus instead. Buses 20E, 30, 30A, 105, 210, 210B and 230 and trolleybuses 75 and 79 stop at Hősök tere M on Dózsa György út, where both sheltered platforms are step-free and have tactile paving
- Both museums beside the square are step-free by lift: the Museum of Fine Arts by one you work yourself, the Kunsthalle by one a member of staff runs
The routes, the platforms and the lift are covered properly in our getting there guide.
What to do here
Look up at the empty column first
The Millennium Monument is built round a 36-metre Corinthian column, and for more than 120 years György Zala’s Archangel Gabriel stood on top of it: nearly five metres of cast bronze holding the Holy Crown and the apostolic double cross, both of them given to Hungary’s first king in the legend of Pope Sylvester II’s dream.
It came down at the end of 2024. The fastenings of the main figure and the bronze ornaments of the Corinthian capital below it were found to be in a critical condition, and the conservation assessment that followed found it in worse condition than the most pessimistic guesses had allowed for.
So go and meet it at ground level instead. The City Park Visitor Centre, in the wing of the Museum of Ethnography on the Heroes’ Square side, holds a free exhibition built round a full-size replica, and you can stand next to a figure that was only ever meant to be seen from 36 metres below. The centre does not publish its hours online, so go in the daytime.
Find the Heroes’ Memorial Stone, and know it is not a grave
In front of the monument, inside a low rail, lies a stone slab that most people walk straight past. This is the Heroes’ Memorial Stone, and the National Heritage Institute is precise about what it is. In Hungary it performs the function of the tomb of the unknown soldier, and it is not a grave in the strict sense, because it holds no remains.
Jenő Lechner designed the original monolith, set in front of Prince Árpád and inaugurated with the monument in May 1929. The stone lying there today is Béla Gebhardt’s replacement, of spring 1956.
The wreaths on it are laid at state commemorations, and the last Sunday in May is the Hungarian Heroes’ Memorial Day in law. It is railed, and it is the one part of the square you do not walk across.
Read the right-hand colonnade by its dates
Two colonnades stand behind the column, each of them a quarter circle, with seven figures in each and fourteen in all. Zala made the original king statues with eight other sculptors. Four allegorical groups stand on top of the colonnade ends, and the two on the inner ends, facing each other behind the column, are his two-horse chariots of War and Peace.
The list of fourteen was settled in 1897 and it did not survive intact. János Hunyadi went in as the only one of the fourteen chosen then who was never a king. The five Habsburg rulers on that list were replaced between 1948 and 1955: by István Bocskai and Gábor Bethlen in 1948, Imre Thököly in 1954, Ferenc Rákóczi II and Lajos Kossuth in 1955.
The dates are the tell. Facing the monument from Andrássy Avenue, find those five at the outer end of the right-hand colonnade, the end nearest the Kunsthalle, and you are looking at the point where the twentieth century got at the monument.
Stand where Hungary’s twentieth century happened
The square was a park with trees until 1938, when it was paved for the Eucharistic World Congress and turned into a parade ground. Everything that made it famous happened on that paving: the May Day parades, the women’s demonstration at the memorial stone a month after the Soviet intervention of November 1956, and Kádár’s rally in 1957.
On 16 June 1989 the ceremony for the reburial of Imre Nagy, the executed prime minister of 1956, was held on the square and around it, and the pictures of that day are among the images of Hungary’s peaceful change of system.
Our history of Heroes’ Square tells all of it properly, including who was thrown off the monument and when.
Go into one of the two buildings that frame the square
Standing on Andrássy Avenue looking at the monument, the Museum of Fine Arts is the building on your left and the Kunsthalle (Műcsarnok) the one on your right. From the monument they are about 2 and 3 minutes away.
Albert Schickedanz and Fülöp Herzog designed both of them and the monument between them, which is why the square reads as one composition rather than three buildings that happen to share an address.
The Museum of Fine Arts holds more than 100,000 works, with collections of Old Master paintings, old Hungarian art, sculpture, Egyptian and classical antiquities and graphics.
The Kunsthalle has stood on the square since 1896 and calls itself the home of Hungarian fine art. It shows contemporary visual art in changing exhibitions, so what is on is different every few months, and that makes it the better of the two if you have a spare hour and no plan. Both are shut on Mondays and both publish their own times.
Insider tips
Go early, or go after dark
First thing in the morning is the only time the square is quiet, because the coaches and the walking groups build through the day. The other good time is after dark, when the monument and both museum facades are floodlit and the crowd has gone home.
There is no shade on the square
None at all. It is a plane of open stone, and in July the middle of the day on it is punishing. Take a hat, and take water, because there is nothing to buy on the square itself.
The metro is the quick way in, not the level one
Hősök tere on the M1 is about 4 minutes from the monument and it is stairs only. If steps are a problem, take a bus or a trolleybus to the Hősök tere M stops on Dózsa György út instead, which are sheltered, level and tactile-paved.
Walk in down Andrássy if you have the legs
From the House of Terror it is about 19 minutes down Andrássy Avenue to the square, and about 35 from Deák Ferenc tér. The M1 runs underneath the whole way, so you can give up at any station and ride the rest.
Take the guided walk if you want City Park too
The one tour that is genuinely about this square carries on into City Park afterwards, past the Zoo, Széchenyi and Vajdahunyad Castle, and finishes at the Museum of Ethnography, where the Gabriel replica is, with a folk song performed by the guide. It meets at the equestrian statue of Huba on the monument itself, and it does not run every day, so check dates and availability before you plan a morning round it.
Nearby attractions
The square sits at the city-centre end of City Park, so almost everything worth walking to is behind it rather than in front.
Budapest Zoo & Botanical Garden
About 6 minutes north on foot, where Állatkerti körút meets the park.
Széchenyi Thermal Bath
About 7 minutes north-east through the park, past the Zoo.
City Park (Városliget)
Begins directly behind the square, with Vajdahunyad Castle about 8 minutes away across it.
Andrássy Avenue
Runs from the square all the way into central Pest, with the M1 underneath it.
Did you know?
- The Gabriel statue went to the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900, where it won the grand prix as the emblematic artwork of the Hungarian section, before it was ever put up on the column.
- It was cast at the Gladenbeck bronze foundry’s workshop on Váci Road in Budapest, in bronze 3 to 6 mm thick on an internal steel frame, with at least half a tonne of ballast inside the sphere to counterbalance the wind on its wings.
- Zala signed it. The inscription on the statue reads “ZALA GYÖRGY 1897”, four years before it went up.
- The square has only been called Hősök tere, Heroes’ Square, since 1932. The monument was begun thirty-four years before that.
- One pair of architects, Albert Schickedanz and Fülöp Herzog, made all three of the things on the square: the Museum of Fine Arts, the Kunsthalle and the Millennium Monument.
History
The monument took thirty-one years from the first shovel to the last unveiling, and the square kept changing long after that. Parliament ordered it for the thousandth anniversary of the Magyar conquest, which Hungary marked in 1896; Albert Schickedanz and György Zala got the commission without a competition, because the Prime Minister asked them; and the finished work was not inaugurated until 1929.
- 1891
Budapest asks for a monument
The General Assembly of Budapest petitions Parliament for a public monument to the nation’s thousand-year history. The far end of Andrássy Avenue, by the City Park, is designated as the site.
- 1896
Parliament orders it
Act VIII of 1896 orders the monument. The Műcsarnok opens on the square in the same year, and a law provides for building the Museum of Fine Arts.
- 1898
Building begins
Work starts to Albert Schickedanz’s design, with György Zala as sculptor. Neither won a competition, because none was held. Prime Minister Sándor Wekerle asked them himself.
- 1901
Gabriel goes up
The statue of the Archangel Gabriel is raised on the column, the first of the monument’s figures to be finished.
- 1905
The architecture is handed over
The built parts of the monument are complete, but only five of the statues are ready, and the Great War slows the rest.
- 1929
Finished and inaugurated
The completed monument and the Heroes’ Memorial Stone are inaugurated together on 26 May, thirty-one years after building began.
- 1938
From park to parade ground
The trees are taken out and the square is paved for the Eucharistic World Congress, which changes what it is used for completely.
- 1989
Imre Nagy reburied
The ceremony for the reburial of the executed prime minister is held on the square and around it on 16 June, and becomes one of the images of the peaceful change of system.