This is the Hungarian Cultural Heritage Portal. It's a common website of Hungarian archives, museums and libraries, operated by the Library of Parliament, Hungary (Országgyűlési Könyvtár). Its main aim is to publish Hungarian cultural heritage on one site for databases, records, documents, images, and maps.
Now more than 100 institutes serve data, some of them from foreign countries. The collections can be searched simultaneously, returning relevant results and saving you time.
Placing the photos, postcards on a real map after a registration is possible, there is also a competition among registered users, so it is a common project. Clicking on the map, you may get how many pictures belong to a specified town, you can check them one by one. Clicking on one picture, you will get a full description: size, location, categories, etc. Own photo album can be created (registration is needed).
The Public Collection Library contains 4 million pages of digitized publications (periodicals, books that are also museum objects) contributed by libraries, archives and museums. Everything is inserted into a common search engine and you can browse among local newspapers, school reports/ yearbooks, periodicals published both in Hungary and abroad and church publications. The digitization was mostly sponsored by the National Cultural Fund of Hungary (NKA).
The Régi Magyar Könyvtár (Old Hungarian Library) is the merit of Szabó Károly, who collected and unfolded with scientific accuracy the proofs of Hungarian literacy from the very beginning until the Treaty of Szatmár. The first volume was published in 1879 and reveals the list of works, whose language is Hungarian and were published between 1531 and 1711. The second volume specifies the holdings written in a foreign language, but printed in Hungary between 1473 and 1711. Károly Szabó’s book is a collection of titles, that reveal the works written in Hungarian and published in the country. The Arcanum did not only digitize the above mentioned book, but also the original printed holdings (600 volumes coming from the National Széchenyi Library), altogether 200,000 pages.
MAPIRE: Historical Maps of the Habsburg Empire
This magnificent archival content is world-wide unique in sense of antiqueness, resolution and artistic value. Thanks to Mapire you can have access to such cartographic holdings that were beautifully and precisely drawn by hand and kept in secret for centuries in the Kriegsarchiv, Vienna. Next to the map sheets of the First and Second Military Survey that cover territories from Galicia to Dalmatia, Transylvania to Salzburg, you can also explore the Hungarian Kingdom (Third Military Survey) and its extremely detailed cadastral maps on a scale of 1: 2880. Furthermore you will find old city maps of Budapest regarding the 18th-20th century. Thanks to GIS technologies, old maps can be simultaneously browsed with ones of today (Open StreetMap, Google Maps), moreover you can navigate in a 3 dimensional mode thanks to Google Earth.
Database of Archival Documents of Medieval Hungary (DL/DF)
The database contains the medieval documents issued before the battle of Mohács (29th August 1526). Archives in Hungary collect separately these above mentioned old documents for more than a century. The digitized collection is composed out of two databases: the DL, i.e the digitized version of108, 000 records that are in the possession of the National Archives of Hungary and DF, the collection consisting out of photographical copies taken of those 93,000 records that are stored in different archives.
The complete database contains altogether 200,000 digitized documents. In each case it is marked the identifier (DL or DF), the date of issue, the name of the sender, the form of subsistence (original or rewritten) and the reference number.
The database consists out of two collections: one coming from the Budapest City Archives and the other from the Austrian State Archives. The prior institution provided notarial documents, testimonies, records of law suits and proceedings, but also minutes of the Buda and Pest convocations. The latter collection containes convocation minutes from the feudal era and delegational manuals.
The size of the database reached 1.5 million records and 2 million pages of images.
The Empress of the Habsburg Monarchy, Maria Theresa ordered a census, called the Urbarium of 1767 in order to take stock of the peasantry and their situation. The urbariums are written documents that picture what kind of obligations has the villein toward his squire, how big is the serf’s animal stock, what kind of utensil- and toolkit he uses, how big is the plot of land he cultivates and last but not least the tables contain the names of the squires, villeins and cottars. The database consists out of 300,000 pages relevant for 43 counties and it includes the whole archival fond.
For all those, who are interested in local- and family history, this public and free database can be the major source of information for research. Next to the huge amount of digitized original document, one can also find information about the name of the laird, about the size of the estate and the number of villeins that paid a fee in order to cultivate that certain land.
The original, priceless document is enshrined at the National Archives of Hungary. These books contain the copies of all the letters, orders and certificates of merit issued on behalf of the consecutive kings between 1526 and 1918. The 73 volumes contain 38,000 entries and 40,000 pages and it follows all the moves of the actual ruler that was on throne. In fact, through these documents reflect the history of Hungarians concerning the above mentioned period.
As a bonus, the Illésy collection was also digitized.
The Urbaria et conscriptiones it is considered to be the most popular collection of the National Archives of Hungary. The holdings were issued between 1527 and the 19th century and they provide information about the estate of the squire and the villeinage that had obligations towards them, it contains records concerning the financial incomes and utilities that derived from the landed properties. The database consists altogether of 300,000 digitized pages and their descriptions.
Archontology denotes the study of historical offices and important positions in state. The archontes were leaders, governors of a certain region, country, but also leaders of political/ religious etc. organizations. Archontologies consist out of lists containing the name of the office holders, their function and the period they were on duty.
This database contains the names of the office holders from Zala county, Hungary, noble registers and the collection of the Budapest City Archives.