Hungarian Academy of Sciences

In front of you is the seat of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and its story begins with a few words spoken far from here. On 3 November 1825, at the Diet sitting in Pozsony (today's Bratislava), Count István Széchenyi rose and offered a year's income from his estates to found a learned society devoted to the Hungarian language and Hungarian science. Other nobles followed on the spot. At a time when government and university spoke Latin or German, it was almost a declaration of cultural independence.

1A palace for a language

The building came forty years later. It was designed by the Berlin architect Friedrich August Stüler, the work in Pest was run by Miklós Ybl and Antal Skalnitzky, and it opened on 11 December 1865. Stüler also suggested ordering from Berlin the terracotta statues you see up high: scholars representing the branches of learning, from Galileo to Newton and Descartes to Leibniz. The only Hungarian in the group is the philologist Miklós Révai, modelled by Miklós Izsó.

2The man in the square

Széchenyi didn't stop at the Academy. He pushed for steam navigation on the Danube, the regulation of the river and the Chain Bridge behind you. That is why Kossuth called him "the greatest Hungarian". His bronze statue in the square, by József Engel, was unveiled in 1880.

A nation isn't founded with swords alone: it takes dictionaries too.

3What to look for

• The corner statues: on the Danube front, Newton and Lomonosov; the latter replaced a bomb-damaged Raphael after the Second World War.
• Miklós Révai, on one side of the main façade: the only Hungarian scholar in the set.
• Széchenyi's statue, ringed by allegorical figures, facing the square that bears his name.