Mill Museum

In the 1870s Budapest was the largest flour-producing city in Europe, and was second in the world after Minneapolis. Some 13 flour mills were established in Pest in the 1860s, most of them in the Ferencvaros area which came to be called the ‘stomach of Budapest’. All used the system of roller-milling, originally invented at Frauenfeld  in Switzerland in 1833-34 by Jacob Sulzberger, and developed in Hungary by the Swiss Abrahan Ganz (1814-1867) and the German Andras Mechwart (1834-1907), who worked for Ganz from 1859 and directed the Ganz foundry from 1867.The first steam-powered roller mill in Budapest, Henger Malom, began work on 15 September 1841. The Concordia mill was built in Pest in 1867 and was active until 1929. Alongside it stood a lofty elevator built in 1883 but demolished as unsafe in 1948.

The five-storey Concordia mill became a museum that showed the development of the grinding and sieving machinery used in wind and water mills, and the introduction of the Ganz-Mechwart chilled iron rollers. The museum has closed, although the collection has been put into store. The building remains but has been adapted as apartments.