Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Párisi Udvar
The most notable building on Ferenciek tere is the Párisi Udvar , a flamboyantly eclectic
shopping arcade constructed in 1915. Upon completion, its fifty naked statues above the third
floor were deemed incompatible with its intended role as the headquarters of the city savings
bank, symbolized by images of bees throughout the building. Long neglected and still await-
ing its fate, the gloomy interior is as ornate as an Andalusian mosque, with its hexagonal
stained-glass dome designed by Miksa Róth, carved wooden statues, and majolica tiles from
the Zsolnay factory. The side gate is normally open so you should be able to have a wander
around inside.
The Klotild Palaces
The traffic roars into the western end of Ferenciek tere between a pair of imposing fin-de-
siècle office buildings - designed by Flóris Krob and Kálmán Giergl, the same team behind
the Bershka department store building and the Music Academy . Named the Klotild Palaces
after the Habsburg princess who commissioned them, the northern one is home to the luxury
Buddha Bar hotel, while the southern one once housed a restaurant owned by Egon Ronay's
father - after it was nationalized in 1946, the young Ronay moved to London where he was
appalled by cooking standards.
Kossuth Lajos utca
Heading out the eastern end of Ferenciek tere, the road seamlessly becomes Kossuth Lajos
utca , where the noise and the fumes deter the visitor from lingering. Immediately on the right
is the Franciscan Church that gave the square its name. The relief on the church's wall re-
calls the great flood of 1838, in which over four hundred citizens were killed; it depicts the
heroic efforts of Baron Miklós Wesselényi, who personally rescued scores of people in his
boat.
Some 200m further along, the junction of Kossuth Lajos utca with the Kiskörút is named
after the Astoria Hotel on the corner, a prewar haunt of spies and journalists that was com-
mandeered as an HQ by the Nazis in 1944 and the Soviets after the 1956 Uprising. Today, its
Neoclassical coffee lounge is redolent of Stalinist chic.
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Szervita tér
North from Ferenciek tere, Petőfi Sándor utca leads up to Szervita tér , a square containing
the best and the worst of twentieth-century architecture. Three remarkable buildings from the
golden age of Hungarian architecture line its western side. No. 3, the former Turkish Bank
House dating from 1906, has a gable aglow with a superb Art Nouveau mosaic of Pat-
rona Hungariae (Our Lady) flanked by key figures from Hungarian history, one of the finest
works of Miksa Róth . No. 2 (1908) is one of the earliest Modernist buildings in Budapest,
 
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