One of the city’s most splendid cafés – the Lotz Hall, a century-old attraction on Budapest’s Andrássy Avenue – unexpectedly went dark on Wednesday, with no indication of when the popular hangout may reopen in the future. The artfully decorated café completed the Hungarian-owned Alexandra bookstore that operated inside the city’s monumental Paris Department Store, and it served as a major tourist destination for its fascinating frescoes that covered the café’s interior, painted by 19th-century Hungarian artist Károly Lotz, whose works decorate other Budapest landmarks like the Opera House.

On Friday morning, a group of puzzled tourists stood on Andrássy Avenue in front of the city’s stately Paris Department Store, peering through the darkened windows to only see the desolate halls of the now-closed Alexandra bookstore inside.

At the far end of the building, the artfully decorated Lotz Hall – a major Budapest tourist destination dating back to the 1800s, named after the renowned Magyar painter whose works cover its walls and ceiling – has also suddenly gone dark. A terse sign on the door states that the store is now closed down for technical reasons, a note that is allegedly linked to the financial difficulties of Hungary’s Alexandra group that operated this central Budapest bookshop.

Originally providing a location for a downtown casino during the 19th century, this prime site on Budapest’s grandest boulevard was extensively renovated at the onset of the 20th century to be transformed into the Art Nouveau-style Paris Department Store, which opened its doors in 1911 to offer high-class shopping amid the height of Budapest’s belle époque. As part of the restoration works, the casino’s grand ballroom – characterized by the elaborate frescoes of Hungarian painter Károly Lotz – was masterfully preserved to become one of the shop’s major highlights.

After dominating Budapest’s shopping scene for decades (even as changing functions and interruptions dotted its long history), this fashionable downtown department store closed down in the year 2000, and the building stood abandoned for years.

However, In 2009 the splendid structure was brought back to life to house a multistory Alexandra bookstore. With the opening of the new store, the Lotz Hall at the building’s gallery level was turned into a beautiful Budapest café, and in the following years this artful attraction became a highly frequented hangout for many visitors to Hungary’s capital.

However, just after seven years in operation, on March 1st the entire shop unexpectedly closed down, with the Lotz Hall – which shared the same entrance with the bookshop – no longer being accessible, according to an announcement shared on Lotz Hall’s official Facebook page on Wednesday. Hungarian media reports that this abrupt termination of the store’s operation might be linked to recent financial difficulties of the Alexandra group, which recently forced the company to close down numerous shops across the country. On Friday morning, we tried contacting both the Alexandra group and the Lotz Hall management by e-mail to request more information about the decision and when the coffeehouse may reopen, but as of press time we received no response.

We hope that it won’t be long before the magnificent Lotz Hall can welcome visitors once again – keep reading We Love Budapest for updates – and meanwhile, we also hope that this shutdown inside the Paris Department Store won’t affect the operation of the city’s popular 360 Bar perched atop the historic building; a promising sign near the rooftop bar’s entrance on Andrássy Avenue suggests that while the panoramic hangout is currently closed for the winter season, it is still set to reopen during spring.