Postal Savings Bank
Art Nouveau bank palace with a gold and green ceramic roof of climbing bees, hives and serpents.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Postal Savings Bank in Budapest follows the architect Ödön Lechner, who spent the 1890s fighting to invent a Hungarian style free of Vienna's classical rules. You'll hear how a rigged first competition for the bank's 1899 headquarters was overturned, handing the job to Lechner and his partner Sándor Baumgarten, who raised the whole building in about a year on the site of an old fortress and execution yard. It traces the roofline's gold and green ceramic bees, hives and serpents from the Zsolnay works in Pécs, and the strange bet Lechner made about who would ever look up to see them.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Museum of Applied Arts
Art Nouveau landmark with a swirling Zsolnay ceramic roof and Eastern-inspired ornament that scandalized its critics.
Four Seasons Hotel Gresham Palace Budapest
Art Nouveau palace of peacock ironwork, reborn as a riverside luxury hotel after decades of decay.
Párisi Udvar
Ornate covered shopping arcade with a hexagonal stained-glass dome and mosaic floors.
Budapest Orthodox Synagogue
Raw-brick Art Nouveau synagogue with a Hebrew-inscribed facade, stained glass, and a working mikveh.
Central Market Hall
Neo-Gothic iron-and-brick market hall roofed in glazed Zsolnay ceramic tile, rebuilt after fire, war, and near collapse.
Hungarian Parliament Building
Neo-Gothic riverside seat of government crowned by a gilded dome symbolizing a founding year.