Standing grandly at a corner of Erzsébet Square since 1914, a spotless Secessionist building serves as Budapest’s British Embassy for decades now – but this month, Hungarian media broke the news that London’s diplomatic team will relocate to a new headquarters in Buda when their current lease expires this year. As the United Kingdom’s base in Hungary, this urban palace has a fascinating past inherent to its place in international relations, but its remarkable role in Budapest history precedes its occupancy by British ambassadors. What does the future hold for this extraordinary edifice?
According to Hungarian news magazine HVG, this year the British delegation is moving to a peaceful villa in Buda’s District II (formerly Hungary’s Embassy of the Netherlands) after renting the downtown location since 1947. This monumental city-center building was originally constructed in Secessionist style by Magyar builder Károly Reiner to be the stately headquarters of Hazai Bank, opening for business in 1914 – just before World War I brought an abrupt end to Budapest’s golden age.
Nonetheless, Hazai Bank continued to operate here through the following three tumultuous decades, and after the onset of World War II it would play a crucial role in saving many Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust. Following the German occupation of Hungary in 1944, heroic Swedish consul Raoul Wallenberg – in Budapest on a secret mission to help rescue Hungary’s Jewish population through his protected diplomatic status – rented space in this bank and declared it as an official Swedish consulate that could not be entered by Nazi authorities, to eventually shelter many Magyar Jews here while sometimes living in the building himself, until his mysterious disappearance in early 1945.
A plaque on the building’s corner commemorates Wallenberg’s valiant deeds here.
When Britain’s diplomats moved in after WWII, their new Embassy immediately became a bastion of Western culture during Hungary’s era under communism, with the local authorities closely observing every person who entered or exited the building throughout the Cold War. However, soon after the Iron Curtain fell in 1989, the British Embassy celebrated by having their building completely restored to its original glory, just in time for the 1990 visit of Prince Charles and Diana, Princess of Wales; it was reported that Diana was so impressed by the new marble banisters that she slid down one of them from the second floor. Three years later, when Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip came to Budapest, Her Majesty inaugurated the Embassy’s newly renovated reception hall.
More recently, the British Embassy team made arrangements for the 2010 Budapest visit of Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, as well as for Prime Minister David Cameron’s visit to Hungary’s capital earlier this month. As for the future of this downtown palace, the property owners would not reveal information about this to HVG – but considering the beauty of this building, its prime city-center location, and its distinguished place in Hungarian history, we hope that the next residents will carry on in an equally dignified manner for Budapest’s ongoing saga.
