The house is a listed national monument due to its architectural significance and being the birthplace of Ignaz Semmelweis, an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures.

Described as the "saviour of mothers", Semmelweis discovered that the incidence of childbed fever could be drastically reduced by requiring hand disinfection in obstetrical clinics.

[6] Architecturally the most interesting feature of the facade is the cornice, onetime regarded as the most beautiful in Buda; it has a twin corbels and exquisite hanging stucco garlands.

[7] Due to the steep slope of Castle Hill, the narrow rear wing of the house was built upon a stone retaining wall with four cellars dug into the ground.

Behind the main house there was an upper courtyard with smaller ancillary structures that were demolished in the late 1890s when the headquarters of the Directorate of Royal Gardens was built on the subdivided plot (the large building was destroyed in the war).

Schallinger's heirs sold the house in 1885 to a wealthy grocer, Márton Wolf who remained its owner until his death during the final years of World War I.

Herculanum mulató was a popular café chantant (zengeráj, Sängerei) in the 1880s, frequented by Crown Prince Rudolf and his friends according to local legends, and it had a beer garden in the interior courtyard.

The events were organised by the Budapesti Királyi Orvosegyesület (Budapest Royal Society of Physicians), and a red granite plaque was unveiled at his boyhood home in Apród utca.

[11] Around 1918 the house was bought by Gyula Kalmár, the owner of a liquor factory, who wanted to demolish it in 1936 but his application for a six-storey apartment building was denied by the municipality.

Meindl House was an exception: although the northern and rear wings were lost (including the former flat of the Semmelweis family), the surviving part was hastily repaired after the war to make it habitable again.

[18] Seven families lived in the remaining half of the house in 1959 without running water, also there was a car repair shop in the courtyard and a heap of overgrown rubble where the destroyed wing had stood.

[19] The dilapidated building was still bearing the scars of the war in 1958 when the Ministry of Health decided the creation of a museum of medical history in the birthplace of Hungary's most famous doctor.

A number of artefacts and memorabilia in the Library of Medical History (Orvostörténeti Könyvtár) and the university became the nucleus of the collection but a nationwide campaign was started as well to gather more relevant objects.

The new north and west wings flanking the courtyard were built in mid-century modern style with rough-hewn stone walls on the ground floor and large ribbon windows on the upper story.

[23] The remains of Ignaz Semmelweis were moved from the Kerepesi Cemetery to the museum in 1963, and reinterred in a niche of the retaining wall on the western side of the courtyard.

The Semmelweis Museum of Medical History played an important part in the career of József Antall, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Hungary after the end of communism.

[28] The museum was a place of refuge for Antall during the years of communist dictatorship after his participation in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and his subsequent banishment from teaching due to his anticommunist views.

In 1964 the museum bought a few pieces of Biedermeier furniture (writing desk, bookcases, coffee table) and a 19th-century Shiraz rug from Ignác Semmelweis' grandson, obstetrician Kálmán Semmelweis-Lehocky.

Two oval portrait medallions by August Canzi showing Ignaz Semmelweis and his wife, Mária Weidenhofer on their betrothal in 1857 were also bought from the doctor's grandson.