Small museums are the most appealing to me. I feel that I can learn a lot about Budapest from villas and places that hosted the everyday life of those who forged the city.

When looking at the monuments of Budapest and studying its Art Nouveau period, it’s hard not to stumble upon the name of Miksa Róth, the master of stained glass. His mosaics are also on my favorite building! If anybody in Hungary can be compared to Alfons Mucha, it’s him.

A genius of the craft of mosaic, like his grandfather apparently also was, Róth learnt to decorate glass from his father Zsigmond, whose workshop, he took over. He was renowned worldwide, decorating, among others, the National Theatre of Mexico, while his works can be found in Transylvania, Italy, Austria, Slovakia and in the Netherlands.

Inspired by Tiffany, his works were displayed in 1893’s at Chicago World Trade Fair and awarded in Paris with the opalescent Pax and Rising Sun mosaics. 

I love to wonder around Miksa Róth Memorial House, where some of his mosaics and painted windows are exposed and explained by the staff, while the spaces where the artist lived feature original furniture. 

Born in 1865, Miksa Róth lived in this building between 1910 and 1944, when he died. Afterwards, his widow Jozefa Walla and their children Elizabeth, Amalia and Joseph, kept living in the property, which was later on donated to the City together with the exposed mosaics and glassworks, to open the Memorial House.