History

The Art Nouveau style and Belle Époque atmosphere of the Boscolo New York Palace and New York Cafè.

The building housing the Boscolo New York Palace, a 5 star luxury hotel in the heart of the Hungarian capital, was built between 1892 and 1894 to designs by the architect Alajos Hauszmann, with the assistance of Flòris Korb and Kàlmàn Giergl. The project was commissioned by the New York Life Insurance Company for its Hungarian head office. The prestigious building, in the eclectic neo-Renaissance style, features a typically Art Nouveau monumentality. Decorative features inspired by the natural world (plants and animals) and sinuously curved lines (spirals, volutes, curls) adorn the vaulted ceilings and columns; sumptuous and elaborate details and an assortment of lavish materials are used to embellish the premises.
The great hall is a large rectangular space, a large courtyard roofed in with glass. The interior courtyard walls are painted a very light beige, with arches and different architectural and decorative details for each floor.
One wing of the luxury hotel, on the ground floor, is occupied by the historic New York Café, dubbed "the most beautiful café in the world". Opened in 1894 by Sandor Steuer, a member of an important Hungarian coffee family, the café soon became the centre of Budapest's vibrant artistic and cultural life at the turn of the twenty-first century. Visiting the New York Café today is like stepping into a time warp, back to the Belle Époque: you are suddenly totally enveloped in an atmosphere of luxury, opulence and sophistication, highlighted by marvellous ceiling frescoes by Gusztav Mannheimer and Ferenc Eisenhut, painted in the mid-19th century.
Between the two World Wars the Café went through a period of decay. It reopened in the mid-20th century, but it is only thanks to the recent thorough restoration programme, which lasted 5 years (2001-2006) and was carried out by the Boscolo Group, with the collaboration of the National Centre for the Restoration and Reconstruction of Heritage Sites, that the building has been brought back to its original beauty and splendour, and now the city and, indeed, the entire world can once again admire this artistic landmark of great social and cultural interest.
The opulent decor is not just an interior feature but spills out onto the façade as well, where bronze demonic-looking fauns and delicate wrought iron details gracing the entrance portal, which is framed by superb and majestic stone telamons, are only a few of the features that highlight and underscore the magnificence and importance of the building.
The restoration and transformation of the building into a Boscolo Hotel is the result of the combined effort of the architects Maurizio Papiri, Adam D. Tihany, Massimo Iosa Ghini and Simone Micheli. In their work they perfectly and successfully blend and combine old-world prestige and sophisticated contemporary design, creating a preferred destination in Budapest not just for historical and artistic reasons, but also for top-of-the-range luxury hospitality.