Review of Four Seasons Gresham Palace, by James Wallman

Four Seasons Gresham Palace luxury hotel is an art nouveau 'palace' essential to the city's bid to bring Budapest's belle époque back to life. Its extraordinary location is hard to beat, as the luxury hotel looks out onto the Danube's most stunning crossing, the Szechenyi Bridge, and Buda's Castle District.

The luxury hotel was never, in fact, a palace. It was built by the Gresham Assurance company as offices, apartments and a shopping arcade in 1906. The Four Seasons team used the same materials used a century ago to renovate.

The facilities

From the outside, the luxury hotel's tower's gold mosaics glint in the sun. Once inside, the lobby's reworked T-shaped steel and glass cupola makes you feel you've arrived. Mosaics on the floor and walls, sourced from the original small workshop in Venice, are in swirling secessionist style. Elegant sculptures echo Giacometti style and the Austrian-made chandelier above reception completes the grand effect.

On the top floor, the spa has all the trappings of exclusive pampering. It begins with the locker rooms' deep, dark red carpet. Upstairs, under subdued lighting, a long lap-pool is backed by swirls of a deep, African yellow marble slab that leads to the whirlpool bath. Tiles in the steam room are in Moroccan red.

Food in the luxury hotel is overseen by Moroccan executive chef Abdessattar Zitouni. The Pava restaurant serves modern Italian-Hungarian fusion with a list of 140 Hungarian wines, selected monthly by a group of independent wine writers. The Szepsy tokaji dessert wine is fabulous with the house's foie gras. Save room for carpaccio of pineapple for dessert.

Service is personal in this luxury hotel, from the doormens' greeting to the chipper hello from maids as you pass them in the corridor. Local critics have raved about everything from the service to the Hungarian pastries at the Gresham Kavehaz, modeled on the original, where between-the-wars artists, thinkers and schemers met to discuss. And if you fancy a cocktail before bed, the alabaster and black marble bar gives you that calming, patrician feeling - so useful for a good night's sleep.

The rooms

Opening your curtains in the morning to the quintessential Budapest vista makes rooms with a Danube view especially gratifying. All of the luxury hotel's 179 rooms, though, exhibit the signature Four Seasons' luxury. While all have large beds with just the right bounce and a desk, it is the bathrooms that really sing. With a bathroom almost as large as the bedrooms, black marble, red marble and glass slows your escape into this exciting city.