With the advent of modern technology, we no longer have to venture deep into dusty library bookshelves to view old documents, photos, and magazines – the number of online archives continually grows, much to the satisfaction of researchers and those who like to dwell on the past. Thanks to Internet databases like Postcards Hungaricana, you can now spend days perusing historic mailed mementos to travel through time and see personalized views of Budapest’s past.

Although the Hungaricana service only made its debut a few months ago with the help of Arcanum Ltd., it already enjoys huge popularity. The service allows anyone to peruse the public-collection database of over 150 institutions, storing 10 million pictures and 20 million descriptions in a digital format. This is a stupendous amount of information, but thankfully, a practical system of search categories is set up to help users navigate it. The range of topics include, for instance, digitalized historical maps of Hungary, which you can browse at the Mapire site.

Postcards Hungaricana is also a part of this database of a mind-blowing magnitude. It currently displays 300,000 postcards

belonging to five

institutions (the Zempléni Museum, the National Széchényi Library, the Hungarian Museum of Trade and Tourism, the Museum of Hungarian Agriculture, and the Damjanich János Museum). The search engine allows users

to filter the collection by

themes and geographical locations.

While the exhibition
“Budapest in 100 years and 2000 postcards”

in
Gozsdu Udvar

already gave us hours of contemplation over postcards from and about Budapest in

the past, Postcards Hungaricana prolongs this pleasure: now you can browse postcards in

themes of your choosing

from the comfort of your home. The visual experience is accompanied by captivating content: the messages carried by the postcards range from love letters through apologies to everyday reports. As it turns out, many senders used every bit of

available space on the postcards, writing also onto the waves of the Danube and the slopes of
Gellért HIll

on the front of the card.

Browsing the collection is not only entertaining: users

get to see the impressions of different eras, and might even find family memories from generations past, for those with

Hungarian roots. The beautiful calligraphies are also worth a closer look, so here are some of our favorites below. We can’t say that we’ve seen all the Budapest-related postcards already, but we’re working on it.

Megjelent első bookazine-unk, ne maradj le róla!

Már 15 éve lélegzünk összhangban a fővárossal. Jubileumi kiadványunkban mindent megtalálsz, ami magazinunk és eddigi munkánk esszenciája. Gasztronómia, kultúra, városi legendák és Budapest arcai, interjúk, történetek és a legjobb helyek – úgy, ahogyan mi látjuk a fővárost.

Rendeld meg itt vagy keresd a nagyobb könyvesboltokban!

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