Diane Vadino, the editor of Nylon magazine, fell in love with Gresham Palace, which has been housing illustrious Four Seasons Hotel for seven years.
In her August 8th post, she not only denoted Gresham as the most beautiful Secession building in Budapest, but also took the time to do some research regarding its history.
To make you at least as informed as Vadino, here are some crumbs of information: the Palace situated adjacent to Chain Bridge was designed by Zsigmond Quittner in 1904 for Gresham Insurance Company. After being occupied by Soviet forces for several decades, it has been reopened in 2005 following an 84-million-dollar reconstruction.
Diane’s favourite lobby – which doesn’t fail to amaze the majority of guests, either – happens to be in Gresham. But what sort of wonder catapults this very lobby to the top of a well-travelled expert’s list? Well, the answer is easy. The vaulted glass ceiling, the chandelier made of hand-crafted crystal leaves, and the mosaic floor consisting of more than a million tiles.
Vadino’s most endeared interior element proved to be the staircase bordered by wrought iron peacocks.
To make things even more sweeter, Buda Castle’s panorama also came out as number one, scoring bonus points for the top-notch hotel bed. “In a room this nice – writes Diane - the view is enough, which is the only problem with staying in the perfect hotel: I'm not going to see nearly as much ofBudapestas I should.” Maybe she hadn’t seen as much as she should have, but what she had seen – The Fisherman’s Bastion, to name another sight – was certainly amazing.
