Juhász Gyula - Szántó András: Hotels - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1999)

Inns were built in their vicinity in the Middle Ages and then hotels since the nineteenth century. Such was the hotel of the Császár Baths or the Hotel Gellért.

Designed by Miklós Ybl, the Grand Hotel on Margaret Island opened in 1873. Medicinal waters were conducted to the bathrooms of the building, which contained a lounge, a library, a doctor’s surgery and a steam laundry. Following its modernisation in 1934, the complex was comparable with the world’s foremost entertainment and recreation facilities of a similar nature. Celebrities including heads of states and monarchs were entertained in the hotel’s suites. Its café, restaurant, and patisserie were among the favourite gathering places of Pest high society.

The ageing poet János Arany stayed here for six years and among the hotel’s frequent guests were Sándor Bródy, the writer who otherwise resided in the neighbouring more modest Kisszálló, as well as such other celebrated novelists as Sándor Hunyadi, Gyula Krúdy and, in the years before World War II, Ernő Szép and Sándor Márai.

During the siege of Budapest, the building of the Grand

The Hotel Palatínus in the early 1940s

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