You're standing on Andrássy Street outside the Zelnik István Southeast Asian Gold Museum, a private collection shut since 2013.
Last reviewed 24 October 2026 · A three-minute read · 1500–now
The short answer
At Andrássy út 110 in Budapest, the Rausch Villa housed the Zelnik István Southeast Asian Gold Museum, a private collection of nearly a thousand gold and silver objects drawn from a 50,000-piece hoard. Opened in September 2011 by former diplomat István Zelnik, it closed for good in 2013 due to financial troubles.
Soviet tanks during the 1956 hungarian revolution in Budapest. PT-76, T-34-85 and IS-3. — 1956 · FOTO:Fortepan — ID 24349 : Adományozó/Donor: Nagy Gyula. archive copy at the Wayback Machine · CC BY-SA 3.0
2011 to 2013
A diplomat's gold collection filled the Rausch Villa
The Zelnik István Southeast Asian Gold Museum opened here in September 2011, and it is now closed to the public. Behind its doors once stood nearly a thousand gold and silver objects, pulled from a private hoard of over 50,000 pieces. The collector behind it all was Zelnik István, a former Hungarian diplomat who had served in Vietnam before turning to business and art collecting. The museum traced two thousand years of art from eleven Southeast Asian countries, built around Cham, Khmer, Javanese, and tribal gold work. Its collection of gold masks was said to outsize the British Museum's own holdings. A French expert on Vietnamese art, Jean-François Hubert, called it the first museum of its kind since the Musée Guimet opened in Paris in the 1800s.
The building held more than cases of gold. A tropical garden and a teahouse, set in the old Rausch Villa, displayed silver-inlaid animal skulls and shipwrecked stone figures pulled from the Gulf of Siam. Visitors could walk from rooms devoted to Buddhism and Hinduism into a Shiva shrine and a hall tracing the old maritime Silk Road.
The museum's run was short. Money problems forced it shut at the start of 2013, and its website and teahouse closed with it.
2012
Cambodia sought the return of a looted statue
In 2012, Cambodia's government asked the United States for help getting back a sandstone statue from the collection. The statue showed a mythic warrior and was carved around a thousand years ago. Experts valued it between two and three million dollars. Cambodia said it had left the country illegally, during the chaos of war. Zelnik did not deny it. He told the New York Times, "There is no question the statue was looted in the final stages of the war." He offered to buy it himself and donate it.
2013 to 2014
Money troubles closed the museum for good
The museum shut its doors at the start of 2013, and stayed closed into 2014, when the closure became final. Money troubles and legal questions ended the project. Some of the gold and silver on these walls had already gone to charity. Between 2012 and 2013, the museum auctioned off 184 pieces from the collection to support Hungarian studies of the East. A collection of 80 Khmer objects, gold bracelets and bowls among them, went to the Hungarian National Museum as a gift. Nobody could say which temples they came from.
2014 to now
Darker history unfolded further along the same street
After the museum closed, the Rausch Villa itself went up for sale. The asking price was 2.5 billion forint, and the first attempt to sell it found no buyer. The building you're standing outside of now holds nothing of what once filled it.
Just up Andrássy Street, the same road carried a much darker history through the 1940s and 1950s. At number 60, the Arrow Cross Party, Hungary's own fascists, ran their headquarters from October 1944 to January 1945. In the basement, they tortured and killed hundreds of people, many of them Jews, before shooting them into the Danube or sending them to death camps. The writer Ernő Ligeti was dragged there with his wife and son that winter. Death squad commander András Kun had them stripped and interrogated. Ernő and his wife were shot by firing squad around midnight. Their son was shot four times and survived.
When the war ended, the same building did not become safe. From 1945 until 1956, Hungary's communist secret police, the ÁVH, took it over and ran it as their own headquarters. Thousands were arrested, interrogated, and tortured in the same cells. Along the Danube embankment nearby, Arrow Cross squads had already shot an estimated 70,000 to 80,000 Jews during the war, often stripping them and tying them together first.
The Zelnik Villa stands closed and empty, its gold gone, on a street that still carries the building that was Hungary's torture house.
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Beneath the city's Holocene soil lies a thick Oligocene sequence of siltstone, marl and sandstone, laid down as marine molasse between about 34 and 23 million years ago.
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Early modern
1500
Half a kilometer away, the Millennium Monument commemorates a millennium of Hungarian history, part of the grand ensemble built up around Heroes' Square.
The street this spot sits on, Andrássy út, was laid out starting in 1872, linking Erzsébet Square to City Park and later becoming a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2002.
Around 130 meters away, Bajza utca station opened in 1896 as part of the Budapest Millennium Underground, continental Europe's first electric underground railway.
At 60 Andrássy út, less than 300 meters from here, the Arrow Cross Party tortured and killed Jews and others in the basement from October 1944 to January 1945, and the Communist secret police (ÁVH) did the same from 1945 to 1956.
In the winter of 1944–45, Arrow Cross squads marched Jews from the city, including from assembly points near here, to the Danube embankment, stripped them and shot them into the river.
Author Ernő Ligeti, his wife and son were seized by death squad commander András Kun, taken to the Arrow Cross headquarters on Andrássy út, stripped and interrogated before being executed in January 1945.
In September 2011, diplomat-turned-collector István Zelnik opened a museum in the restored Rausch villa at Andrássy út 110, showing roughly a thousand Southeast Asian gold and silver artifacts from his collection of tens of thousands.
The Zelnik István Southeast Asian Gold Museum stood here from September 2011, displaying nearly a thousand gold and silver objects from a private hoard of over 50,000 pieces spanning two thousand years of Southeast Asian art.
Who founded the Zelnik István Southeast Asian Gold Museum?
István Zelnik, a former Hungarian diplomat who served in Vietnam before becoming a businessman and art collector, founded the museum and amassed its underlying collection.
Why did the museum close?
Money problems forced the museum to shut at the start of 2013, and the closure became final in 2014 amid financial and legal difficulties.
What happened to the museum's collection after it closed?
Between 2012 and 2013 the museum auctioned 184 pieces to support Hungarian studies of the East, and 80 Khmer gold and silver objects were donated to the Hungarian National Museum.
What was the dispute over a statue in the collection?
In 2012, Cambodia asked the United States to help recover a thousand-year-old sandstone statue of a mythic warrior from the collection, valued at two to three million dollars, saying it had left Cambodia illegally during wartime chaos; Zelnik did not deny this and offered to buy and donate it.
What happened at Andrássy út 60 near the museum?
At number 60, less than 300 metres away, the Arrow Cross Party tortured and killed hundreds of people in the basement from October 1944 to January 1945, and the communist secret police, the ÁVH, used the same building for torture and interrogation from 1945 to 1956.
