The Garden

In György Klösz's photo taken in the early 1880s, one can already see the two-storey villa built in the so-called Italian style under 103 Sugárút (today Andrássy út), housing today the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Asiatic Arts. The commissioner and first occupant of the buiding was a merchant, József Knorr and his family. They lived here for seven years, then sold it to Ferenc Hopp, a respected businessman who completed his first trip around the world not long before, and who moved here from his apartment on the Grand Boulevard as more and more space needed for his ever-expanding collection. In the first years in his new home, Hopp made little alterations little on the house itself, but transformed his garden into one of the most magical sights of Budapest. On his first tour around the globe, Hopp had visited the famous botanical garden in Buitenzorg (now Bogor), then a Dutch colonial city on West Java. The experience moved him so deeply that he decided to create similar surroundings of his own in Budapest. The Dutch name Buitenzorg can be loosely translated as ’without worries’, and as his own home and garden were intended to drive away troubles, Hopp named the villa “Buitenzorg Residence”. He filled the garden with exotic plants and with curious objects he had collected on his travels, much to the amazement of his contemporaries. The volume you are holding in your hands is intended to commemorate this ”worryless” garden by presenting its history, a description of the flowers, architectural features and landscaping elements it contained, and photos taken in it and of it

ISBN 978-615-81396-5-6

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