The stamped out stencil-type metal plates along the top look like they say Terror in mirror writing and they do: on a sunny day the sun shining through the letters spells Terror in normal lettering on the walls. This was the Headquarters of the AVH Secret Police during the Stalinist era (and briefly during the Nazi period after the Germans moved into Hungary in 1944 when President Horthy tried to negotiate a separate peace with Stalin).
A tour through the four floors plus basement of the museum is, like any similar museum of totalitarianism, a fascinating but sad experience. You realise how much the people suffered until 1956 and what caused people to rise up against the Soviet occupiers and their local lackeys. Rather like the people of Warsaw who rose up against the Nazis in 1944 and got no help, the people of Hungary got no help from the West in 1956 either, probably because of fear that the "cold war" would turn into a hot war. Nevertheless, the Stalinist brutality (worse in some respects than the Nazis) and repression that caused the uprising was softened to a gradually increasing degree after those who led the resistance had been executed.
The museum also contains a communist style café, second picture. Website
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