Hungarian culture, also known as Magyar culture, is characterized by its distinctive cuisine, folk traditions, poetry, theatre, religious customs, music and traditional embroidered garments. Hungarian folklore traditions include tales, music, dance, decorated pottery, carvings and embroidery. Historically, Hungarian music has largely consisted of folk music and classical pieces. Whilst the Hungarian language is classified as Ugric, Hungarian culture exhibits enduring Turkic elements, stemming not only from being under Ottoman rule, but also from earlier interactions and affiliations with Turkic peoples. Noted Hungarian authors include Sándor Márai, Imre Kertész, Péter Esterházy, Magda Szabó and János Kodolányi. Imre Kertész is particularly noteworthy for having won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002. Hungarian culture is also influenced by Romani culture.

Architecture

Hungary is home to:

Dohány Street Synagogue, the largest synagogue in Europe, and the second largest in the world after the Jerusalem Great Synagogue in Asia Széchenyi Medicinal Bath, the largest medicinal bath in Europe Esztergom Basilica, the third-largest church in Europe Pannonhalma Archabbey, the second-largest territorial abbey in the world Gödöllő, the second-largest Baroque castle in the world Pécs, the largest Myles Necropolis outside Italy

Music

Hungarian folk music is a prominent part of the national identity and continues to play a major part in the country’s music. It often features a strong dactylic rhythm due to the Hungarian language consistently putting stress on the first syllable of each word. It also exhibits an enduring Turkic influence. Hungarian music is also influenced by Romani music.

Prominent Hungarian classical music composers include Franz Liszt, Franz Schmidt, Leó Weiner, Ernő Dohnányi, Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály, György Ligeti, Miklós Rózsa. Hungary also has a number of renowned composers of contemporary classical music including György Kurtág, Péter Eötvös and Zoltán Jeney, among others.

Franz Liszt spoke no Hungarian until 1870, when he started to learn the language, but clearly identified himself as Hungarian and founded the Academy of Music. Béla Bartók was also born in the former Kingdom of Hungary. György Ligeti was born in Transylvania, after the region was transferred to Romania. Both György Ligeti and Béla Bartók studied at the Liszt Academy before moving abroad, where a large portion of their work was written.

Broughton claims that Hungary's "infectious sound has been surprisingly influential on neighbouring countries (thanks perhaps to the common Austro-Hungarian history) and it's not uncommon to hear Hungarian-sounding tunes in Romania, and Slovakia.Szalipszki, pg.12Refers to the country as "widely considered" to be a "home of music". The Busójárás carnival in Mohács is a major Hungarian folk music event, formerly featuring the long-established and well-regarded Bogyiszló orchestra.Broughton, pg. 159-167

Hungarian classical music has long been an "experiment, made from Hungarian antedecents and on Hungarian soil, to create a conscious musical culture [using the] musical world of the folk song".Szabolcsi, The Specific Conditions of Hungarian Musical Development"Every experiment, made from Hungarian antedecents and on Hungarian soil, to create a conscious musical culture (music written by composers, as opposed to folk music), had instinctively or consciously striven to develop widely and universally the musical world of the folk song. Folk poetry and folk music were deeply embedded in the collective Hungarian people’s culture, and this unity did not cease to be effective even when it was given from and expression by individual creative artists, performers and poets." Although the Hungarian upper class has long had cultural and political connections with the rest of Europe, leading to an influx of European musical ideas, the rural peasants maintained their own traditions, so that by the end of the 19th century Hungarian composers could draw on rural peasant music to (re)create a Hungarian classical style. For example, Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, two of Hungary's most famous composers, are known for using folk themes in their music. Bartók collected folk songs from across Central Europe, including Romania and Slovakia, whilst Kodály was more interested in creating a distinctively Hungarian musical style.

During the era of Communist rule in Hungary (1944–1989), a Song Committee examined and censored popular music for traces of subversion and ideological impurity. Since then, however, the Hungarian music industry has begun to recover, producing successful performers in the fields of jazz such as trumpeter Rudolf Tomsits, pianist-composer Károly Binder, and in a modernized form of Hungarian folk, Ferenc Sebő and Márta Sebestyén. Hungary has had several popular rock bands such as Illés (with creating the hungarian rock music), Metró, or Omega.

Literature In earliest times, the Hungarian language was written in a runic-like script () derived from the Old Turkic Script. The country switched to the Latin alphabet after being Christianized under the reign of Stephen I of Hungary (1000–1038). There are no surviving documents from before the 11th century.

The oldest written record in Hungarian is a fragment in the Establishing charter of the abbey of Tihany (1055) which, while mostly written in Latin, contains several Hungarian terms, among them the words feheruuaru rea meneh hodu utu rea, "up the military road to Fehérvár". The oldest complete text is the Funeral Sermon and Prayer (Halotti beszéd és könyörgés) (1192–1195), a translation of a Latin sermon. The oldest poem is the Old Hungarian Laments of Mary (Ómagyar Mária-siralom), also a translation from Latin, albeit a flawed one, from the 13th century. It is also the oldest surviving Uralic poem.

Among the first chronicles of Hungarian history were Gesta Hungarorum ("Deeds of the Hungarians") by the unknown author usually called Anonymus , and Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum ("Deeds of the Huns and the Hungarians") by Simon Kézai, both written in Latin. These chronicles are a blend of history and legends, so they are not always historically accurate. Another chronicle is the Képes krónika (Illustrated Chronicle), which was written for Louis the Great.

Renaissance literature flourished under the reign of king Matthias Corvinus (1458–1490). Janus Pannonius—even though he wrote in Latin—is considered one of the most important writers in Hungarian literature; he was also the only significant Hungarian Humanist poet of the period. The first printing house was founded during Matthias' reign by András Hess in Buda. The first book printed in Hungary was the Chronica Hungarorum.

Matthias Corvinus' library, the Bibliotheca Corviniana, was among Europe's greatest collections of secular historical chronicles and philosophical and scientific works in the 15th century. In 1489, Bartolomeo della Fonte of Florence wrote that Lorenzo de Medici had founded his own Greek-Latin library after being inspired by the example of the Hungarian king. Matthias Corvinus' library is now part of UNESCO World Heritage. Two other important figures of the Hungarian Renaissance are poets Bálint Balassi and Sebestyén Tinódi Lantos.

The most important poets of the period following the reign of King Matthias were Bálint Balassi (1554–1594) and Miklós Zrínyi (1620–1664). Balassi's poetry, reflecting medieval influences, can be divided into three groups: love poems, war poems, and religious poems. Zrínyi's most significant work, the epic Szigeti veszedelem ("Peril of Sziget", 1648–49) is written in a fashion similar to the Iliad. In the poem Zrínyi recounts the heroic Battle of Szigetvár where his great-grandfather died while defending the castle of Szigetvár. Among religious works, the most important is the Bible translation by Gáspár Károli, the Protestant pastor of Gönc, which was completed in 1590. This translation is called the Bible of Vizsoly after the town where it was first published. (See Hungarian Bible translations for more details.)

The Hungarian enlightenment followed about fifty years after the Western European enlightenment, reaching Hungary through Vienna. The first writers of the Hungarian enlightenment were, among others, Maria Theresa's bodyguards György Bessenyei and János Batsányi. The greatest poets of this period were Mihály Csokonai Vitéz and Dániel Berzsenyi. The enlightenment prompted a reform of the Hungarian language. The greatest figure in this reform was Ferenc Kazinczy. Beginning at that time, Hungarian became useful for scientific writing, and many words were coined to name new inventions.

Hungarian literature has recently gained renown outside the borders of Hungary, mostly through German, French and English translations. Some modern Hungarian authors have become popular in Germany and Italy, especially Sándor Márai, Péter Esterházy, Péter Nádas, and Imre Kertész. Kertész is a contemporary Jewish writer and Holocaust survivor who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2002.

The classics of Hungarian literature have remained largely unknown outside Hungary. János Arany, a famous 19th-century poet, is still much loved in Hungary, especially his collection of ballads. Arany is among several other "true classics" including Sándor Petőfi, the poet of the Revolution of 1848, Endre Ady, Mihály Babits, Dezső Kosztolányi, Attila József, and János Pilinszky. Other Hungarian authors are Ferenc Móra, Géza Gárdonyi, Zsigmond Móricz, Gyula Illyés, Albert Wass, and Magda Szabó. Vilmos Kondor has created a new trend in recent years, and is mentioned as the creator of Hungarian noir (see Budapest Noir).

Film

Many Hungarians have contributed to film art and its technology, but, due to political reasons, many of them found it was easier to find success abroad. As of 2018, Hungarians working in Hollywood and some in Hungary had received more than 150 Academy Award nominations and about 46 Academy Awards. Already in the 1930s there were 17 Hungarian nominations, but the peak was in the decade of the 1940s when about 51 nominations and 13 to 15 Academy Awards were given to exiled Hungarians. The best year was 1944 with 9 to 10 nominations and four (Michael Curtiz, Paul Lukas, George Pal, and William S. Darling) Academy Awards. The first Hungarian to be nominated was Lajos Bíró (1929) and the first to win the award was William S. Darling (1933). Art Direction might be the most successful category concerning wins/nominations: Paul Groesse 3/11, William S. Darling 3/7, Joseph Kish 1/5, Vincent Korda 1/4, Alexandre Trauner 1/2 and Marcel Vertès 1/1. The number of nominees and awards in all categories, exceeds all other nations, counted per capita.