Record Atlas
7 eras · 1000–2026 · 698 places

Hungary — the Kingdom's core

Budapest, Debrecen, Szeged, Pécs. Which empire held this ground in which years — and, the part that matters, which archive that means.

Where researchers lose records here

1526–1699 — A hundred and fifty years of Ottoman occupation across the centre of the kingdom, and almost no parish register survives it. Hungarian genealogy very often simply stops at 1700 and the reason is here.

1918–1945 — THE TRAP, AND IT IS THE LARGEST ON THIS MAP. Trianon in 1920 moved TWO THIRDS of the Kingdom of Hungary to Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. A village that was Hungarian in 1890 keeps its pre-1920 registers in Budapest AND its later ones in Bucharest, Bratislava or Belgrade — under a name that also changed.

Whose archive this ground was

YearsWho held itWhose archive that means
1000–1526 Kingdom of Hungary no registers survive

Before registers.
1526–1699 Ottoman Hungary and Royal Hungary no registers survive

THE HOLE. A hundred and fifty years of Ottoman occupation across the centre of the kingdom, and almost no parish register survives it. Hungarian genealogy very often simply stops at 1700 and the reason is here.
1699–1867 Habsburg — Kingdom of Hungary Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár (Hungarian National Archives) · Hungaricana · FamilySearch

Parish registers resume, in Latin, kept by Catholic, Reformed, Lutheran, Orthodox and Jewish congregations separately.
1867–1918 Austria–Hungary — the Hungarian half Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár (Hungarian National Archives) · Hungaricana · FamilySearch · ANNO — Austrian Newspapers Online

CIVIL REGISTRATION FROM 1 OCTOBER 1895 — state-kept, in Hungarian, covering everybody regardless of religion. The single most useful date in Hungarian research, and the duplicate copies are at the national archives.
1918–1945 Hungary after Trianon Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár (Hungarian National Archives) · Hungaricana · Arolsen Archives

THE TRAP, AND IT IS THE LARGEST ON THIS MAP. Trianon in 1920 moved TWO THIRDS of the Kingdom of Hungary to Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. A village that was Hungarian in 1890 keeps its pre-1920 registers in Budapest AND its later ones in Bucharest, Bratislava or Belgrade — under a name that also changed.
1945–1989 People's Republic of Hungary Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár (Hungarian National Archives)
1989–2026 Hungary Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár (Hungarian National Archives) · Hungaricana

The rings are approximate — deliberately. They exist to shade which filing system a place fell under, not to adjudicate a border. A place near a ring's edge should be checked against both neighbours.

See the whole span, 1000–2026, on the map →

The map takes a range, and a range that crosses one of the rows above is where records get lost: the family never moved, and the archive on the far side of the handover will tell you it holds nothing.

698 places on this ground

The 200 carrying the most collections are listed; 498 more stand on this ground. Every place has them all.

33 FamilySearch collections reach this ground

Ranked with the regional ones first — a collection for a province is usually a better lead than a national index, though the national index is often where a name is actually written down. A free account opens the images.

All record regions · The map