Monkey House (Budapest Municipal Zoological and Botanical Gardens)

The Monkey House, the Rodent House and the Kangaroo House enclose a small square, turning friendly porches, verandas and balconies towards it. Even the large Monkey House is made up of small, homely components, while the open space between the buildings is familiar and human in scale.

The towers and dominating gables of the two end pavilions close an otherwise linear composition broken centrally by the intersecting pitched roof. The composition is similar to the Transylvanian castles constantly refashioned and expanded over the centuries, such as the castle in Sebesvár/Bologa, Kalotaszeg/Tara Cälatei. The narrow windows, the tower and the refined use of stone and whitewash of the warden’s house counter the stricter architecture of the House of Large Carnivores behind it. Originally, there was an ornamental frieze in Art Nouveau style, depicting herbal designs and monkeys eating fruit, on a part of the building that was demolished during the first transformation of the building.

The Monkey House and the adjacent House of Large Carnivores, with their huge facades, elegant, narrow windows and tall chimneys can be likened to the residential buildings designed by English architects Philip Webb and C.F.A. Voysey. In the 1930s the building was extended and somewhat modified - presumably according to Kós’ ideas. This is when the open-air cage at one end of the building was added, as well as the semi-circular greenhouse in the middle. The building was renovated in 2004.