Directly across from St. Stephen's Basilica, where Hercegprímás Street cuts through Budapest's inner fifth district, a late nineteenth-century neoclassical palace — its cream stucco facade articulated by pilasters, rusticated base, and ornate ironwork balconies — was converted into the Aria Hotel Budapest, which opened in 2015 under the Library Hotel Collection. The music-themed concept organises the hotel's 49 rooms and suites across four wings, each devoted to a different genre: classical, opera, jazz, and contemporary. The interiors, designed by New York-based Adam D. Tihany, treat that conceit with enough wit to avoid novelty fatigue — exposed brick vaulting crowns the jazz suites alongside acid-green velvet headboards and pop-art canvases of guitar-playing figures, while the classical-wing rooms deploy deep-buttoned blue velvet headboards, coffered plaster ceilings, and marble chimneypieces retained from the original structure. The rooftop is where the building's position becomes undeniable: a terrace garden furnished in amber wicker and saffron-cushioned lounge chairs sits at near eye-level with the Basilica's twin bell towers and the copper-green dome that Josef Kauser completed in 1905, the view framed by clipped topiary and planters of cypress. Below, the enclosed bar space carries a different register — red carpet, tufted linen armchairs in taupe, and fringed floor lamps beside a glazed conservatory wall, the atmosphere hovering somewhere between a Budapest salon and a late-night jazz club. The building's own bones — brick arches, stone cornices, original fireplaces — do most of the architectural work throughout.

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