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

The Árosa in the 1940s

The AROSA and the HARGITA Resort Houses and Pensions

Nos. 26 and 30 Agancs út, district XII A total of six larger and several smaller pensions went into business between 1936 and 1938. Clusters of apart- ment-cum-boarding houses were raised on the top of Széchenyi Hill - in 1940 the Árosa Resort Houses were built to plans by István Hoch and Ernő Forgács, while in 1941 the Hotel Hargita opened. Hotel guests could admire a peerless panorama of the city from the terrace of the restaurant.

After 1945, rented flats were opened in the hotel. It was in the restaurant of the former hotel that the first experimental TV-studio working for the broadcasting tower erected right next to the building was opened in the mid-fifties when it was operated for a few years.

The REGE and the GYOPÁR Resort Houses and Pensions

Nos. 10 and 15 Rege út, district XII At the same time as the apartment-cum-boarding houses in Agancs utca, two resort houses were built in the neighbouring Rege utca. It is no coincidence that the Rege and the Gyopár are similar in many ways. Both were designed by József Szemlőhegyi Fischer, one of the best-known representatives of modernist architecture in the period.

Construction work was interrupted by World War II. The hotels received guests as late as 1944, but after the occupation of Hungary by German forces, the Gestapo

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