[5] In May 1896 a Millennium Exhibition was to be held in Budapest, celebrating 1,000 years of Hungarian statehood, and artists from what was then Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia were invited to attend.

Urged by Bukovac, Croatian artists decided to present their works in a purpose-built Pavilion, constructed around a prefabricated iron skeleton so that it could easily be shipped to Zagreb after the exhibition.

[5] The Budapest Pavilion was designed by Hungarian architects Flóris Korb and Kálmán Giergl and was constructed by the Danubius building company.

[4] The building's exterior was decorated with sculptures in the academic art style — the eastern facade displays busts of three Italian Renaissance painters — Giulio Clovio (Julije Klović), Andrea Schiavone (Andrija Medulić) and Vittore Carpaccio, and the western facade has busts of Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian.

[6] In recent years it featured retrospective exhibitions of artists such as Milivoj Uzelac,[7] Gilles Aillaud,[8] Edo Kovačević,[9] Gerhard Richter, Vilko Gecan, Dušan Džamonja,[10] Vlaho Bukovac,[11] Boris Demur,[12] Anto Jerković,[13] Marijan Trepše, Bela Csikos Sesia,[14] Nasta Rojc[15] and group exhibitions which featured works of contemporary artists such as Santiago Sierra and Boris Mikhailov,[16] as well as 19th-century artists such as Karl von Piloty, Nikolaos Gyzis, Gabriel von Max and Franz Stuck.