When I heard that the ground floor of the Boscolo Budapest Hotel was home to a fin de siècle coffee house with interiors that haven’t changed since opening in 1894, I dragged my family there. Once abuzz with giants of the Hungarian literary scene, the interior of the New York Cafe is breathtaking: the ceiling is adorned with nineteenth century frescoes by Gusztav Mannheimer and Ferenc Eisenhut lit up by a series of Venetian chandeliers. The food is much of a muchness, with puddings that are marginally better than mains, but that’s not really the draw…
DOHANY STREET SYNAGOGUE:
If you visit this historic synagogue while in Budapest, make sure you take the tour. Without it, I might’ve been excited by the grandeur of it, but wouldn’t have known about the Christian influences on the interior (a gesture of goodwill on the part of the architects as the Hungarian Christians and Jews lived peacefully side by side), some of the brave acts that have been commemorated in the Heroes’ Temple, or that the restoration of the synagogue was in part funded by Tony Curtis and the Lauder family. Essentially, I’d have been looking at it without seeing it. Which is criminal when a place is as extraordinary as this.
