THE VOLKMANN STREET MEMORIAL ROOM
A writer’s room, preserved across generations.
The Lőrinc Szabó Memorial Room is housed in the Buda apartment where the poet lived with his family from 1935 until his death in 1957.
This is not a reconstructed museum interior. The study, books, furniture and personal objects belonged to Szabó and his family, preserving the physical surroundings in which he read, wrote and translated for more than two decades.
A HOME BEFORE IT BECAME A MEMORIAL ROOM
It was never meant to be a museum.
For more than twenty years, this was first and foremost a family home. Szabó worked here, surrounded by books, papers and the objects of everyday life, while his wife and children lived around him.
After his death in 1957, the room and much of its contents were preserved by the family. What survives today is therefore unusual: not a later reconstruction of a writer’s study, but a space whose history continued through the generations that cared for it.
THE ROOM
A working writer’s world
The Memorial Room preserves the traces of an intensely active literary life.
Szabó’s desk stands among shelves filled with books. His typewriter, papers, photographs and personal belongings remain alongside volumes he read and worked with, many bearing annotations and other marks of use.
The room was also a workshop of literary translation. Surrounded by dictionaries, editions and reference works, Szabó translated works of European and world literature that became an important part of Hungarian literary culture.
What makes the room remarkable is not the individual objects alone, but the relationships between them. Together they allow us to see something of the everyday environment in which the poet’s work was created.
STEP INSIDE
A glimpse of the Memorial Room
A brief look inside the Volkmann Street room reveals the space as it survives today – the books, furniture and objects accumulated across decades of family and literary life.
OBJECTS AND STORIES
The traces of an everyday life
THE WRITING DESK
The centre of Szabó’s daily work:
a desk surrounded by books, papers and the practical tools of writing and translation.
THE LIBRARY
Thousands of volumes formed the working library of a poet and translator. Many retain the traces of reading, comparison and annotation.
PERSONAL OBJECTS
Photographs, correspondence and ordinary possessions place the literary work within the texture of family and everyday life.
PRESERVED ACROSS GENERATIONS
A family legacy
The survival of the Memorial Room is inseparable from the history of the Szabó family.
After the poet’s death, the room was cared for by members of the family who understood that its value lay not only in individual objects, but in keeping the collection and the space together.
In 1994, Szabó’s son, G. Szabó Lőrinc – known from his father’s poems as Lóci – established the Szabó Lőrinc Foundation. The Foundation has since continued the work of preserving the Memorial Room and the literary legacy connected with it.
Today, another generation of the family is carrying this responsibility forward.
THE MEMORIAL ROOM TODAY
Behind a closed door – for now
The Memorial Room is currently not open to the public.
Our immediate priority is preservation: documenting the room and its collection, assessing conservation needs and making selected materials digitally accessible.
Our longer-term ambition is to create the conditions in which the Memorial Room can once again receive visitors – carefully and on a scale appropriate to a small historic apartment.
Until then, photographs, films and digital documentation can begin to open the door.
A room can preserve a world. Its stories keep it alive.
Home
Lőrinc Szabó
Help us open the door again
Preserving the Memorial Room, documenting its collection and preparing for its future reopening all require long-term care and support.
Your contribution helps ensure that this remarkable literary home survives not only as a memory, but as a place that future generations can encounter.
LŐRINC SZABÓ FOUNDATION &
MEMORIAL ROOM
THE FOUNDATION
CONTACT
Szabó Lőrinc Foundation
1026 Budapest
Volkmann utca 8.
Hungary
© Szabó Lőrinc Foundation. All rights reserved.
SZABÓ LŐRINC ALAPÍTVÁNY ÉS EMLÉKSZOBA 