The palace that houses the Museum of Applied Arts - itself a masterpiece of Hungarian Art Nouveau - was built between 1893 and 1896 on the plans of Ödön Lechner and Gyula Pártos. European applied art classics give the essence of the museum's collection from the Middle Ages to the present day, and it is the first museum in Hungary to collect contemporary artifacts. It is worth noting that the first items in the important international and Hungarian collection were donations from Peter and Irene Ludwig, They are a couple from Cologne who collected antiques.