Cafes

Built by Alajos Hauszmann between 1891 and 1895 as the headquarters for the New York Insurance Company, the building used to house Budapest's Fleet Street. The neo-Renaissance building was built of fine, long-lasting materials with a tasteful mixture of styles. It already had hints of art nouveau, especially in the tower. Boscolo hotels bought it in 2001 and has restored the cafe and converted the rest of the building into a luxurious five star hotel. Budapest had more than 400 cafes at the turn of the 19th century, but the New York Cafe on the ground floor of this building was the most beautiful, the busiest and the liveliest.

Is the square's greatest attraction, it has occupied this spot since 1858.

This cafe of historical importance reopened late in 2008.

One of the most pleasant cafes in Buda, the Angelika opened on the ground floor of St. Anne's presbytery at the beginning of the 1970s. It has a large, adventurous terrace, which features plateaus of varying height and panoramic views of the Parliament.

In the good old days, the Central was the grandest of Budapest's many grand cafes. Built in 1887 by architect Zsigmond Quittner, the coffee house opened at the same time and soon established itself as a writers' coffee house. The Central flourished between the first and second World Wars. The Central reopened in 2000

The Gerloczy is a cross between a Parisian bistro and a carefully-developed, but regular, Budapest eatery which attracts not particularly well-off academics and lower-middleclass neighbourhood locals. It is not only for tourists, that's for sure.

The opening of this large and super-elegant cafe in 2006 heralded a new era for Budapest. Contrary to what many believed, it showed that wounds in the city's fabric could actually be healed. A long line of cafes operated in this space between 1887 and 1950. There is an all-day menu and a separate one for dinner.

For decades this old-fashioned institution guarded the concept of the cafe lifestyle. It has become very touristy lately.

The imaginative conversion of this building put an end to a decade of stagnation in the life of this cafe, which was one of the nicest of the handful of Budapest's truly grand cafes. It once belonged to the Lukacs family but was confiscated in 1949. It closed to the public and became the cafeteria of the secret police. The new cafe here is a typical showcase.