Why should the beautiful die?
It used to be the Hilton, whose management kept flirting with bankruptcy. For some time the odd swoopy addition on the front was stalled half-finished; it is now completed and open. This is Pittsburgh’s tallest hotel, and probably the ugliest as well. But as a place to stay, it has its benefits—among them, spectacular views in all directions.
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It’s said that the Hilton Hotel in Budapest has the best views in the city. Not just because it sits on a magnificent hill overlooking the Danube and the neoclassical and gothic treasures of the second city of the Austro Hungarian Empire, but also because it’s one of the few buildings in the city where you can’t see it.
The same might be said of Pittsburgh’s former Hilton.
The same thing used to be said about eating at the restaurant in the Eiffel Tower (the only place in Paris where you couldn’t see the hideous metal monstrosity), and old Pa Pitt has always said it about the Veterans’ Bridge (the only bridge across the Allegheny downtown from which you can’t see the Veterans’ Bridge).
But if that is the ugliest building in Budapest, then Budapest is singularly blessed.
It’s not that the building is exceptionally ugly, it’s that the rest of the city just is that beautiful. The section in which the Hilton is located is the oldest and best preserved, making the modernism stand out all the more.
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