Csodák Palotája

Csodák Palotája, the Palace of Wonders, is Hungary's first interactive science exhibition, and it spreads across two floors and 5,000 square metres. You hear the place before you take it in: laughter, clicking puzzles, families moving between experiments. Every installation invites you to touch, build, test and invent for yourself, whatever your age.

The idea reaches back to the 1960s and Professor József Öveges, who dreamed of science everyone could grasp with their own hands. The Budapest Science Centre Foundation turned the dream into reality in 1993, and the first exhibition ran for just two weeks. The excitement outlasted the run, and the project grew, moved and expanded over the following years. Today the palace holds more than 250 games and hands-on installations, from spectacular classrooms to escape rooms. Physics anchors the programme, while biology, chemistry and geology have their own labs and themed areas for every interest.

A first round could take in the classic Newton's Apple, a chaotic pendulum and the Illusions Hall, where mirror images turn surreal. Families, school groups and even scientists move through the same rooms and come out with minds still spinning. No two swings of the chaotic pendulum ever repeat, which is exactly the kind of thing you have to see for yourself.