Budapest Guide
Lipótváros and Újlipótváros
Gresham Palace
At the Pest end of the Lánchíd, Roosevelt tér is blitzed by traffic, making it difficult to stand back and admire the magnificent Art Nouveau Gresham Palace on the eastern side of the square. Commissioned by a British insurance company in 1904, it's named after the financier Sir Thomas Gresham, the author of Gresham's law that bad money drives out good, whereby the circulation of coins of equal face value but different metals leads to those made of more valuable metal being hoarded and disappearing from use.
The building was in an awful state when it was acquired by the Four Seasons hotel chain in 2001, but fears of a crass refurbishment have been dispelled by a loving restoration: authentic materials and even the original workshops were sought out to do the job. Today you can once again see Gresham's bust high up on the facade, and members of the public may walk in to admire the subtle hues of the tiled lobby and glass-roofed arcade, with wrought-iron peacock gates and stained-glass windows by Miksa Róth.
Statues of Count Széchenyi and Ferenc Deák, another major nineteenth-century politician, stand at opposite ends of the square. The statue of the former isn't far from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Magyar Tudományos Akadémia), founded after Széchenyi pledged a year's income from his estates towards its establishment in 1825 – as depicted on a relief on the wall facing Akadémia utca.