Due to the Night of Museums, the library services of the ELTE University Library and Archives will be inaccessible on Saturday, on the 21st of June 2025. Everyone is welcome to join our programmes starting at 15.00.
For more information, please visit our website or the Night of Museums’ homepage.
All visitors are welcome!
The Research Room and its library and archive services will offer reduced opening hours from 2 June 2025 until the end of October 2025. During this period, services are available between 9:00 and 16:00 on weekdays.
Thank you for your understanding.
As of May 23, 2025, online bank card payment is available through the ELTE Library WebApp on both desktop computers and mobile devices.
Thanks to this development, outstanding debts to ELTE Libraries can be settled instantly from anywhere. For students, the education system is immediately notified of the payment, ensuring that any restrictions due to library debts are promptly lifted in the Neptun System.
The service has become available for the following ELTE libraries:
On the occasion of the Night of Museums, the first adaptation of Mór Jókai's classic, The Man with the Golden Touch, a silent film long thought to be lost, will be screened on 21 June 2025 at 21.00 in the exhibition hall of the ELTE University Library and Archives. The Hungarian feature film of the writer's most beloved novel, directed by Sándor Korda, will be brought to life on the moving pictures.
This is the earliest of the three film versions of Mór Jókai's novel. The movie is one of the finest achievements of Hungarian silent film production, a faithful adaptation of the original story. Long thought to be lost, it was found in 1983 in the catalogue of the Bundesarchiv Filmarchiv in Koblenz, where it was listed as The Red Half-Moon. The film was first restored with the support of the European Union's LUMIÈRE programme for the preservation of film heritage, and in 2018 a full restoration was completed in cooperation with the Hungarian National Film Fund's Filmarchiv and Filmlabor directorates.
In addition to the Corvin Studio in Budapest, the film was shot on original locations including the lower Danube, the Iron Gate and Komárom.
For Müpa Budapest's Music Competition 2020, composer Bence Farkas reimagined the soundtrack of the 1983 film, and a completely new score was created.
Preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCB6HlvZCik
Venue: ELTE University Library and Archives, Exhibition space
Time: 18:00
(English subtitles are provided for the film.)
The screening is organised by the ELTE–NFI University Film Club. After the screening, starting at about 22:30, our guests are invited to a discussion with music critic and cultural historian Ferenc László. English interpretation will also be offered.
For more information, please visit our website or the Night of Museums’ homepage. All visitors are welcome!
According to our tradition, we will join the Night of Museums on the 21st of June 2025. From 3 p.m. until midnight, our library welcomes all visitors with craft activities, fire enamelling and calligraphy workshops, film screenings, concerts, building tours, guided tours at the restoration workshop and our Jókai memorial exhibition. Tickets will be available at the entrance from the 2nd of June 2025.
Our calligraphy and bookbinding workshop is open for children and adults from 15.00 this year.
Our evening programmes open at 18.00 with a midsummer night concert by the ELTE Art Ensemble. The concert will feature performances by the ELTE Béla Bartók Choir and the University Concert Orchestra, conducted by Franz Liszt Prize-winning artist László Kovács. Families, adults and children are also invited to the screening of the Hungarian cartoon Saffi, the Treasure of Swamp Castle based on the 1885 novel The Gypsy Baron by Mór Jókai, also from 18.00 on the occasion of the Jókai Memorial Year.
On our Hungarian and English library tours, visitors can learn about the history of the library palace and the Perczel Globe, and take a look behind the scenes at our historic library. Guided by our restorer, you can gain an insight into paper-casting and bookbinding techniques, along with the process of book disinfection.
We invite you to visit the memorial exhibition Jókai 200 – The writer of a nation, the soul of a century from 15.30 in our storeroom.
The night will be enriched by a concert of the Fuvalom (Windward) singing group starting at 20.30 and a screening of the film The Man with the Golden Touch from 21.00.
Guests will be able to colour in their own bookmarks, take part in our Jókai quiz for small prizes and build our library palace, reassemble fragments of our codex pages and „life pictures” of Mór Jókai related to his fate and works with our library puzzle.
The doors to the enamel workshop will also be open, where visitors will be able to create unique souvenirs.
For more information, please visit our website or the Night of Museums’ homepage.
All visitors are welcome!
The screenings are organised by the ELTE–NFI University Film Club. The film screenings are organised with the support and cooperation of the ELTE–NFI University Film Club. Photo, audio and video recordings will be made of the events. The recordings will be published on the websites, publications, forums and social media of the participating institutions.
Due to technical reasons, the Reading Hall and the Community Room from the Lobby will be open to readers on 8 May 2025 (Thursday) between 9.00 and 11.00 at the ELTE University Library and Archives.
The other reading rooms are temporarily closed during the mentioned morning hours. From 11.00, all reading areas will be available again according to the current opening hours.
Thank you in advance for your kind understanding!
If you want to discover the secrets of the ELTE University Library's history and the treasures hidden within its walls, explore the library palace with an audioguide. The doors of the country's first state-owned public library will be revealed as you have never seen before.
The audioguide tour, available in English and Hungarian, takes you on a guided tour of the library's imposing rooms, guided by the first named librarian of the Library, Florentius Morus, or Heléne Platz, the first female employee of the Library, and gives you interesting insights into the events of the past, the architectural features of the institution, the motifs of the sgraffito in the lobby and the frescoes in the Reading Hall, as well as the highlights of our collection. The guided tour of the library offers the possibility to customise the tour to your wishes, and the QR codes on the guides will help you to find out even the smallest details. More information on how to use the service is available on our website.
The ELTE University Library and Archives will be closed between the 1st and the 3rd of May 2025.
From Monday (5 May 2025) readers are welcome to visit us for extended opening hours.
We wish you a happy holiday weekend!
The ELTE University Library and Archives offers extended opening hours for readers and students on weekdays and Saturdays between the 5th of May 2025 and the 14th of June 2025 until 22.00 hours. Our new community space offers the opportunity to learn, relax, use kitchen facilities and free computer access.
Through our constantly expanding services, we aim to provide ELTE students with an efficient and effective learning opportunity, with the support of the Students' Union and in cooperation with the students.
The following services are available between 20.00 and 22.00 on weekdays and between 18.00 and 22.00 on Saturdays:
During the extended opening hours, reception and general information is provided. The lobby, the Reading Hall and the community space are open to the public only with a pre-purchased library card.
Everyone is welcome and we wish all our students a successful semester and exam period!
The ELTE–NFI University Film Club continues the series of screenings and discussions. We welcome university citizens from all faculties of ELTE.
„Where foreign soldiers – as allies or conquerors – establish contact with the population of a country, children are born out of wedlock.” – says Dr. Barbara Stelzl-Marx, a renowned researcher on the subject and Vice-Chair of the Austrian Commission for the UN. „Hungary underwent similar traumas during the Soviet occupation, but the search for Hungarian 'war children' has barely begun. We must admit that the war is still not over.” – said the director, Márta Mészáros.
Aurora Borealis – Northern Lights is a twisty family story that explores the depths of the relationship between mother and daughter, across two timelines. Olga, a successful lawyer living in Vienna, finds her elderly mother Maria unexpectedly in a coma. While Mary hovers between life and death, Olga discovers a deeply hidden secret. Her increasingly passionate search takes her back to post-war Europe in the 1950s, where she finds herself at the end of her journey: a man she never knew before. The film speaks with a woman's sensitivity in unusual situations about the drama of identity crisis, the never-healing wounds of war in a fragmented Europe, the passing of the dead and the liberating power of exposing lies and silences.
Date: 30 April 2025, 18.00
Venue: University Square campus (1053 Budapest, Egyetem tér 1-3. fszt., corridor next to the cloakroom)
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D34RN8u9xg
The main roles are played by Ildikó Tóth, Mari Törőcsik, Franciska Törőcsik, Jákob Ladányi.
In the post-screening discussion, our guests are Ildikó Tóth, Jászai Mari Award-winning Hungarian actress, a deserving and outstanding artist, one of the main characters of the film, and Gergely Schell, a trauma counselling psychologist and family therapist.
Due to the limited number of seats, pre-registration is possible at the following link:
https://ajk.elte.hu/content/aurora-borealis-eszaki-feny-meszaros-marta-filmje-2017.e.1854
Correspondence about the film club is welcome via eltenfi.filmklub@elte.hu.
The ELTE–NFI Filmklub on Facebook
