Porhászka László: The Danube Promenade - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1998)

The Hotel Marriott

Continental Hotels and Resorts (IHR) since its opening in 1981. Upon its privatisation on 6 May 1997, it was renamed Inter-Continental, by which name it is known to be catering for discerning tourists and business people. The hotel has more than four hundred rooms, including twenty-four suites. In the course of its internal reconstruction in 1998, a job costing $11 million, the hotel will open two floors of rooms each with Internet access, two telephone lines and a telex connection.

Special mention must be made of the rebirth of the Thonet Court. Parts of the former apartment building house several offices (including the State Audit Office in place of the former Central People's Supervision Committee), while on the other floors there are flats. However, the offices and storage facilities on the ground floor have been gradually phased out since the middle of the 1980s. At first, it was the Gösser, today Anker Beer Hall, which opened around 1985 in the cellar of the northern section with a bowling alley, a rarity in Pest at the time. Later, in 1989, a record shop opened at the northern corner of the building overlooking the Danube.

The Restaurant Dunacorso at another corner of the Thonet Court has been run by the Schuch family since 1971. In summertime the huge patio evokes the promenade of earlier times. The menu features a rich sampling of what Hungarian cuisine has to offer, and guests are nightly entertained with softly played gypsy tunes. The Dunacorso has been the favourite haunt of several famous athletes and actors in recent years. (Actress Ida Turay, an ever-enthusiastic promenader until she passed away in

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