Construction of the National Gallery starts next year

This year the area around the KRESZ Park and BalloonFly has been renovated, next year the green area behind the Hungarian House of Music will be developed and the construction of the new National Gallery will start within the Liget Budapest Project, said Benedek Gyorgyevics, CEO of Városliget Zrt., at a press conference in Városliget on Monday.

As the latest development of the City Park, more than 3,000 square metres of the green area around the balloon has been renewed, a new road network has been completed, new street furniture has been installed, 1,500 different shrubs and plants have been planted and half a thousand perennials have been planted in the area, the CEO said. He added that the construction of the National Gallery would "put the finishing touches to the cultural development of the Grove".

Benedek Gyorgyevics recalled that more than ten years ago it was decided to increase the total green area of the City Park from sixty to sixty-five percent and to renew it. This has been achieved and the number of revitalised park areas has been steadily increasing year by year. "This year, with the renovation of KRESZ Park, we have renewed more than 30,000 square metres of green space, and with the current rehabilitation of the BallonFly area, we have already exceeded 270,000 square metres of renewed green space in City Park," he stressed.

Benedek Gyorgyevics said that the developments are also popular with visitors, as they see high utilisation everywhere from the Városligeti Great Playground to the Mihály Mőcsényi Botanical Garden, from the Városligeti Sports Centre to the dog theme parks. "The built environment, the House of Hungarian Music, the Museum of Ethnography or the renewal of the Museum of Fine Arts are all attractions that were awarded last Saturday in Dubai, with three tourism prizes at the International Travel Awards," he recalled.

Balázs Nagy, the CEO of BallonFly Zrt., recalled that more than two years ago an aerial attraction that was very popular more than 120 years ago, the ballooning in the City Park, returned to the park. With its shape and colours, the City Park Balloon Observatory, which evokes the iconic painting by Pál Szinyei Merse, has now spent around 4 000 hours in the air and has been raised some 11 000 times. The deck has hosted live concerts, proposals, raised the 20-metre Olympic flag and, thanks to a partnership with Liget Budapesttel and Bethesda Children's Hospital, children undergoing long-term treatment at the hospital can travel free of charge.

The rehabilitation of the City Park green space started in 2017. In the first phase, the Hermina Dog Park, the Garden for the Blind and the Youth Sports Fields were renovated on a total area of 25,000 square metres by 2018.Between 2018 and 2020, the second phase, covering more than 150,000 square metres of parkland, will see the completion of the Rose Garden next to the Millennium House, the Great Playground, as well as the sports fields and the two-kilometre running track. The Mőcsényi Mihály Botanical Garden has been reborn, along with the Picnic Garden, the Királyydomb and the Ajtósi dog park.

In the third phase, which will be completed between 2021 and 2023, the Hungarian House of Music and the surroundings of the Museum of Ethnography will be renovated, a music playground will be created, and a green and flowery City Park Promenade will be built connecting Heroes' Square and Dürer Street in Ajtósi.In the third phase, a total of 90,000 square metres of green space will be renovated or created.