Drechsler Palace sat empty on Andrássy Avenue for the better part of two decades, its French Renaissance facade and Ödön Lechner-designed ornament quietly deteriorating while Budapest transformed around it. The building's resurrection as W Budapest in 2023 is one of the more improbable acts of adaptive reuse in recent Central European hospitality — a UNESCO World Heritage address, completed in 1886 by Lechner and Gyula Pártos, handed to London studio Bowler James Brindley to fill with saturated color and maximalist energy. Working alongside Budapest firm Bánáti + Hartvig, who managed the restoration architecture, they chose not to whisper around the historic shell but to argue with it productively. The 151 guestrooms deploy teal lacquer, brass perforated headboard panels, geometric rugs in copper and blue, and curved coral sofas in combinations that somehow find equilibrium with the original plasterwork cornices and tall arched windows. The deeper you go into the building, the more interesting the collision becomes. The restaurant layers channeled navy banquettes, blue ceramic urn lamps, and gold-domed pendant lights against checkerboard floors and mirror-tiled ceilings that multiply the whole composition into infinity. But the most arresting space is below grade, where the spa pool sits beneath a vaulted masonry ceiling of fan-arched ribs — warm terracotta plaster meeting gold column trim and a cool blue-tiled basin. Whatever Lechner imagined for this building in 1886, it probably wasn't this. It's better for it.

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