In all its splendour, the Drechsler Palace, a 140-year-old neo-Renaissance building located in the city centre on Andrassy Avenue, has an imaginative new life – a W hotel with 151 rooms and suites, plus a perfect-to-people-watch restaurant, a chummy lounge, a deep underground spa, and even a speakeasy.
W Budapest revives Drechsler Palace's historical magnificent with a twist
Right across the street from the State Opera House (where Angelina Jolie was recently spotted filming the Maria Callas biopic), this palace, originally designed by architects Ödön Lechner and Gyula Pártos, had previously been a fabulous café spilling out to the street and also the HQ for the Hungarian Institute of Ballet. After an extensive renovation, interior design studios Bowler James Brindley and Bánáti + Hartvig have now morphed the property into a delightful fit for the 21st-century traveller.
Inspired by the two sides of the city, Buda and Pest, the designers have created this playful juxtaposition with a profusion of optical illusions throughout. Whether you’re in the long hallways, pouring a cocktail in your suite, or getting lost on the swirling staircases – it’s filled with the hard and the soft, the black and the white, the light and the dark, and even the up and the down. It may have come from one of Hungary’s most famous exports, the illusionist Harry Houdini.
Thus, the designers smartly used mirrors across the property to create a magic sensation. The rooms become rooms within rooms, as they designed clever ‘second skins’ – design elements sparking their presence without having to have altered the structure of the palace itself. And so, beds are floating, metal meshing details are where you wouldn’t just expect them, closets don’t touch the wall, and freestanding furniture invites repose. Plus, with a nod to chess (a traditional Hungarian pastime), mirrored checkerboard doors grace the rooms and gorgeous monochrome checkerboard flooring surprises in the bathrooms.
Another famed Hungarian is the Hollywood glam roster, Zsa Zsa Gabor. And the design salutes her too: from the green, coral, and deep blues in the rooms paired with contemporary Zsolnay-inspired tiles to the marvellous stained glass features all around the palace, and then there are the lightbulb-framed Hollywood mirrors in the bathrooms, plus jewellery-like light fittings in the hallways.
If you’re staying – and you want to host a little shindig (as you can imagine socialite Gabor would) – opt for either the all-black Extreme WOW Suite or the all-white WOW Suite, as they have a full bar with plenty of seating. That’s if you’re not too busy enjoying the thermal baths in the spa.
This is all a perfect fresh iteration for W hotels as they reintroduce themselves to the world – less ‘party central’ and more thoughtful and elegant, but still wonderfully social.
