Baba Múzeum
Supposedly the largest of its kind in Central Europe, Keszthely’s Doll Museum exhibits some 450 porcelain figurines dressed in 240 types of colorful folk dress. The building has a pastoral look, created not only by the figurines—which convey the multifarious beauty of village garb—but also by the ceiling’s huge, handcrafted wooden beams. On the two upper floors are wooden models of typical homes, churches, and ornate wooden gates representative of all regions in and near present-day Hungary that Magyars have inhabited since conquering the Carpathian basin in 896. The museum’s pièce de résistance is the life work of an elderly peasant woman from northern Hungary: a nine-yard-long model of Budapest’s Parliament building, patched together over 14 years from almost four million snail shells.
