Gresham Palace: Peacocks for a London Insurer
Why is it significant?
Walk up to the great arched gateway and look closely at the wrought-iron gates. They are full of peacocks, their tails fanned out in curling metal. Above you, the facade climbs in stone, ceramics and a glittering mosaic, as if a jewellery box had been scaled up to the size of a city block.
Key Facts
| Place | Gresham Palace: Peacocks for a London Insurer |
|---|---|
| Address | Széchenyi István tér 5-6, 1051 Budapest, Hungary |
| Geo Coordinates | 47.49980, 19.04790 |
| Part of Walk | Crown, Dome and River: Budapest's Parliament, St Stephen's Basilica & the Danube Bank |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk up to the great arched gateway and look closely at the wrought-iron gates. They are full of peacocks, their tails fanned out in curling metal. Above you, the facade climbs in stone, ceramics and a glittering mosaic, as if a jewellery box had been scaled up to the size of a city block.
Strangely, this most Budapest of buildings was commissioned from London. The Gresham Life Assurance Company, named after Sir Thomas Gresham, the Tudor merchant who founded the Royal Exchange, bought the site and built its Hungarian headquarters here, finished in 1906. The architects were Zsigmond Quittner and the brothers József and László Vágó, and they gave the insurers offices on the lower floors and luxury flats above.
It is Hungarian Secession at full volume. Inside, a glass-roofed arcade cuts through the building, lined with Zsolnay ceramic tiles, with stained glass and mosaics by the workshop of Miksa Róth. All of it was paid for by a company named after a sixteenth-century Englishman, on the bank of a Hungarian river.
The good years did not last. The palace came through the siege of 1944 and 1945 damaged, and under communism the flats were carved up and the building slowly decayed. By the 1990s tiles were falling, the arcade was dark and the peacocks were rusting. A long restoration followed, and in 2004 it reopened as a luxury hotel, with craftsmen recreating missing tiles and ironwork piece by piece.
Gresham, by the way, gave his name to an economic rule: bad money drives out good. It is a nice irony on a square dedicated to a reformer who wanted to modernise everything. Now leave the square to the south and walk along the river on the Dunakorzó, the old Danube promenade. After a few minutes, a romantic concert hall will appear on your left, with a small bronze girl waiting on the railing opposite.