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

Hotel to the Qüeen of England

nitzer, housing on its ground floor a popular café. It was on the site of this building, destroyed in the great flood of 1838, that a hotel was opened within a year of the disaster. The new establishment was called the Angol Királynő (Queen of England). It was in this hotel of European renown that the renowned politician Ferenc Deák resided for fifteen years, and it was also here that the great statesman conducted negotiations with the representatives of the Habsburg court to prepare the historic compromise between Austria and Hungary of 1867.

The opening of the Grand Hotel Hungária, built in 1871, marked the beginning of a process resulting in the emergence of the row of splendid hotels on the Danube embankment. Hotels offering world-class service would be opened one after the other here at the time of the city’s unification and then during the millenary celebrations. The leading caterers of the period, the founders of professional dynasties, often became prominent figures in the life of the capital city.

This selection offers an overview of nearly a hundred and fifty years in the recent past of catering in Budapest. This century and a half falls into three major historical periods.

The largest part of this book is addressed to the longest of these periods, lasting as it does from the middle of the nineteenth century to World War II. Before considering hotels in operation to this day (and those closed down without assuming an altered function) we

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