Red Corner: Art Nouveau Budapest

I first fell in love with Art Nouveau architecture while living in Prague.

I’ve never liked the Art Nouveau paintings and thought that this artistic style had nothing more to offer. But the buildings, oh my the Art Nouveau buildings are fantastic!

There are a handful of places around the world to revel in the glory of this architecture, but, according to the Los Angeles Times, one of the most underrated is the city of Budapest, Hungary.

Writer Susan Spano visited the Hungarian capital earlier this summer and wandered through Art Nouveau nirvana, soaking in the “operatic, almost cartoonish flair” that is typical of Hungarian Art Nouveau. I’m not sure how so much of this beauty escaped my eyes when I visited Budapest in the early 1990s but I suspect that the post-communist grime that covered the city tragically buried these masterpieces.

Now that they’ve cleaned things up, looks like I’m going to have to go back to Budapest!