New York Café

In 2011, an international competition named this the most beautiful café in the world, and for once the superlative is not hyperbole. The New York Café opened in 1894 on the ground floor of the New York Palace, and its interior is a fever dream of gilded stucco, frescoed ceilings, crystal chandeliers, marble columns, and velvet upholstery that makes Versailles look restrained. It was designed by Alajos Hauszmann, assisted by Flóris Korb and Kálmán Giergl, and funded by the New York Insurance Company as a statement piece for their Budapest headquarters.

From opening day, the café became the nerve centre of Budapest's literary and artistic life. Writers, poets, editors, and journalists colonised the tables, and several of Hungary's most influential newspapers were edited from the upstairs gallery. The café offered services that went far beyond coffee: they would iron your clothes, clean your shoes, and shave your face, even late at night. According to Budapest legend, the writer Ferenc Molnár threw the café's keys into the Danube on opening night so the doors could never be locked and the literary conversation would never stop.

The twentieth century was not kind. During World War II, the café was damaged. Under communism, the sumptuous interior served variously as a sporting goods shop, a travel agency, and a place to sell horse meat. The gilded columns endured decades of neglect. In 2006, the Italian Boscolo Group completed a lavish restoration and reopened the café as part of a luxury hotel.

Today, the prices match the décor — a coffee costs what a meal costs elsewhere in Budapest. But sit beneath those ceilings, listen to the pianist, and look up. It is a room that makes you understand what Budapest was, and what it still, stubbornly, wants to be.