The House for the Freedom of Speech (2008)

In 2007, in accordance with an agreement signed by the two governments, the United States returned Táncsics's prison to the Hungarian State. The building, located in the historic Castle District of Budapest, was used to detain the Hungarian journalist Mihály Táncsics, an advocate of free speech and hero of the 1848 Revolution. The site had been in the possession of the United States government since the end of World War II.

In 2008, the Archivum initiated a public campaign to turn Táncsics's prison, a symbolic center of the struggle for the freedom of expression, into a museum, a memorial, and a public center devoted to information rights. We proposed to use the space to conceptualize freedom of expression and free speech in modern terms and to explore access to, rights over, and the use and abuse of information in contemporary society.

The idea was received with rebuff by the politicians, while the wider public remained unconcerned. In 2024, 14 years after Orbáns's first two-thirds electoral victory the public media and the overwhelming majority of the printed and electronic press are under the direct control of the government. The power eliminated or laid hands on the most popular, most widely-read organs of the independent press. The access to information of public interest is severely restricted by the laws and the arbitrary conduct of the authorities.

The building is still empty.