Hungarian Academy of Sciences

This guide to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest opens in Pozsony in November 1825, when a young cavalry officer named Istvan Szechenyi stood up in parliament and offered away a year of his own income to found an institution for Hungarian culture and science. It follows the wave of noble donations that came after, and the 1865 palace raised on the Danube bank by Prussian architect Friedrich August Stuler, its facade watched over by statues of Galileo, Newton and Descartes. You will hear about the rumor that trailed Szechenyi for decades, that he never actually settled his pledge.