About the World Heritage Wine Museum and its exhibitions

Even those looking for traditional exhibitions will not be bored at the World Heritage Wine Museum.
A part of the Tokaj Museum's collection, including previously unseen finds, will be housed in the three-story building, so visitors to the city can learn about the region's past.

In Hungary's only World Heritage wine region, the World Heritage Wine Museum opened its doors in 2015, which acquaints the traveler with both the traditional values of the area and the growing regions of the wider world. All this using the achievements of the latest age...

One of the cornerstones of the Tokaj cultural district, the World Heritage Wine Museum, built on a 2,000 m2 floor area in the building of the former Serház, offers a closer connection with the history, culture and, of course, the wines of the world heritage wine regions. In addition to Tokaj, it serves as a "taste" the specialties of Austrian, German, Swiss, Italian, French and Portuguese growing areas:

In the imposing four-story building, respect for traditions and innovative solutions that meet the expectations of the age are organically connected. An interactive exhibition awaits visitors in which the wine region of the Tokaj Mountains can be explored on foot, by bicycle and car, or even by airship, so that you don't even have to leave the building.

Our short film presenting the permanent exhibitions of the World Heritage Wine Museum

History of the Museum

The former wine cellar, which houses the World Heritage Wine Museum, was built around 1790. This is evidenced by a manuscript city map made in 1790, on which, in addition to the one-story building, two dry mills were located on the Serház Street front of the area. At that time, it was owned by the Hungarian royal treasury. The excavating drawing of the Austrian architect Georg Kitzling from 1796 survives, based on which we can be sure that the lower level of the building with Baroque stone cornice windows contained the cellars, and that a vaulted canal led from them to the Bodrog. On the upper level, the workers of the brewery and the employees of the treasury manor probably lived. 

In the 18th and especially in the 19th century, significant Jewish immigration took place from Moravia and Galicia (today's southern Poland and western Ukraine), which were part of the Habsburg Empire and later the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, in the direction of Hungary. Many of them settled in Tokaj-Hegyalja, whose main field of activity was the wine trade, as if displacing from this sector the merchants of mixed ethnic composition, of Balkan origin, collectively known as Greeks. As a result of this profitable activity, they acquired a large fortune and held important economic key positions in Tokaj-Hegyalja until the Second World War.

These events can explain why the brewery became the property of the Tokaj Israelite religious community and in 1874 a Jewish school and a ritual bath (mikveh) were established in the building. The classrooms were built on the first floor and the bathroom on the ground floor, but the rabbi, the parish clerk, the chief cantor, the cantor and the sacter also lived here in the 1930s. With a donation from Mór Seiler, a new classroom was added in 1928, which also served as a house of worship. The school was nationalized in 1948-50 and then returned to the religious community, as the building also housed religious facilities. After the religious community sold the synagogue to the Tokaj Farmers' Cooperative in 1962 due to its deteriorating condition, apartments were created in the school. In the 1980s, a ceramics workshop operated on the site of the bath. In the decades that followed, it was hit by severe depreciation, and then underwent a complete renovation using European Union and local government funds, and from November 10, 2015, it awaits visitors as the Tokaj World Heritage Wine Museum.  

In addition to the Tokaj Mountains wine region (which was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2002), the museum presents 9 European World Heritage wine regions in the company of viticulture, winemaking tools and cooper craft tools, as well as various interactive tools, including the electronic exhibition guides help with viewing.

„5D” Attrakció – Ne csak nézd! Szagold,
tapintsd, halld és ízleld!

A new visual element, a 5D painting at the World Heritage Wine Museum!

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