Lajos Kossuth, a lawyer and one of the leaders of the Hungarian revolution, lived in this eighteenth-century Turkish house in Kütahya with his family in 1850 and 1851, having taken refuge in the Ottoman empire; a group of 56 refugees was hosted in the town with them. It was in this house that he drew up the draft constitution he prepared for Hungary, and he also wrote a Turkish grammar while he was here. Known locally as the Hungarian House, it belonged to Şeyh Bedreddin Efendi and stands on Macar Sokak in the Börekçiler quarter, 900 metres from the town centre.
The Ministry of Culture and Tourism restored the house and opened it as a museum in Kossuth's memory on 19 September 1982. On display are his personal belongings and objects to do with Hungarian culture: photocopies of the grammar he wrote, musical instruments, a tobacco cutter, a cigarette case, an eighteenth-century piano, porcelain dinner services and old photographs of Budapest, alongside ethnographic material belonging to the classical Turkish house.
The wooden house has two floors and seven rooms, stands within a garden and has no window onto the street. On the first floor, where the men's quarters were, are the dining room, a bedroom, a room for the children and a study. The rooms hold built-in cupboards, bedding recesses, a fireplace, a carved niche for sherbet, shelves and divans.
Kossuth declared his country's independence in 1849 and became, if only in a provisional capacity, the first president of Hungary. He lost the war against Austria when Russia entered it on the Austrian side, and he was exiled to Kütahya. He lived in this house until he left the country aboard an American warship in 1851. The anniversary of the Hungarian revolution and war of independence of 1848 and 1849 is marked with a ceremony at the museum.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Kütahya as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 0.5 °C in January to 20.9 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in December (76 mm) and lightest in August (18 mm). Long-term means for 1929-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
Getting there
- Access
- Nine hundred metres from the city centre; public bus number 9 reaches it.
