The luxury one

FOUR SEASONS GRESHAM PALACE

In a city renowned for its art-nouveau treasures, why not stay in one? The Gresham is a feast of melting stone, gilded facades, peacock gates and stalactite chandeliers that was a ruin on the riverbank five years ago. It was built in 1906 as the European office of the Gresham Life Assurance Company, but wartime bombs, followed by a cash-strapped communist regime, had left it rotting by the time Four Seasons took over in 1999. Four years and £65m later, it reopened as the most luxurious of five-star hotels, with all the stellar service and comfort you’d expect from the chain.

If you’re not staying, at least go for coffee and enjoy the priceless views across to the Chain Bridge and Old Buda.

Doubles from £136, B&B; 00 36 1 268 6000, www.fourseasons.com

The designer one

ART’OTEL

On the Buda side, supermodern meets 17th-century classic at the splendidly incongruous Art’otel. The hotel is fronted by a seven-storey glass structure, connected by glass walkways to four beautiful old town houses at the back. And it works brilliantly. Then you have the art: Art’otel is part of a group of hotel-galleries, each of which is adorned with the works of one artist-auteur. The two in Berlin got Warhol and Baselitz; Budapest got the American Donald Sultan, so it’s all cheerful colours and visual gags, with a hidden bird sculpture in each room for good luck, a feng-shui water fountain, domino carpets and fantasy playing-card crockery. Rooms at the front have the best panoramic views across the Danube, while rooms in the older section are more spacious.

Doubles from £136, B&B; 00 36 1 487 9487, www.artotel.de

The pummelling one

DANUBIUS HOTEL GELLERT

With all those thermal waters bubbling away under the city, you’d be mad not to reap their benefits in a traditional spa. The Hotel Gellert is standard stuff, sadly past its turn-of-the-century best, but the adjacent temple to the healing and restorative powers of the springs is still an eye-wateringly pleasurable experience. Hotel guests have unlimited free access to the spa via a rickety lift. You will be ejected into the elaborately tiled and vaporously echoey male or female baths, where the dress code is nude. Treatments are no-nonsense, and Hungarians of all shapes and sizes queue for a pummelling behind the white plastic curtain. Abandon your Anglo-Saxon inhibitions and let it all hang out. You won’t regret it.

Doubles from £90, B&B; 00 36 1 889 5500, www.danubiushotels.com ()

The budget one

HOTEL KULTURINNOV

As you pant your way up Buda’s cobbled streets into the walled Castle Hill district, you’ll enter a realm of medieval churches and castles. Part of the old town was home to commoners in the Middle Ages, but these days it’s a different story. You have to be minted to own a property up here. So it is perhaps the last place you’d expect to find cheap accommodation. Hidden in the bowels of the ornate and stately Hungarian Culture Foundation is a little secret: the Hotel Kulturinnov. Its 16 rooms are set off a wide L-shaped corridor and the atmosphere is relaxed and studenty, with unmodernised 1980s decor. It’s a far cry from the Hilton over the way, but who cares when you’re living amid such cultural riches for peanuts?

Doubles from £44, B&B; 00 36 1 224 8100, www.mka.hu

The classic one

CORINTHIA GRAND HOTEL ROYAL

In 1896, when the Grand Hotel Royal opened as the city’s first five-star hotel, it was at the centre of bohemian high society — the Algonquin of central Europe. Stars from the nearby Academy of Music and opera house partied in the gold- and marble-encrusted ballroom, but as the 20th century wore on, and it was destroyed and rebuilt, its glory faded to an unceremonious closure in 1991. In 2003, a radical design overhaul was completed and now it sparkles once again. Breezy glass atriums, ceilings and suspended bridges cling to the classical facade: it’s all a bit Louvre pyramid. Rooms are designed in plush, classical, muted colours, the highest floors getting the most light and the best views.

Doubles from £260, room-only (weekend rates from £77); 00 36 1 479 4000, www.corinthiahotels.com

I want to go

Getting there: Harriet Perry travelled as a guest of Malev Airlines (0870 9090577, www.malev.hu), which flies from Heathrow, Cork and Dublin. British Airways (0870 850 9850, www.ba.com) flies from Heathrow and Gatwick; EasyJet (www.easyjet.com) flies from Gatwick, Luton, Bristol and Newcastle; Jet2 (0871 226 1737, www.jet2.com) flies from Manchester; and SkyEurope (www.skyeurope.com) flies from Stansted. Airport minibuses drop off and pick up at your hotel (20 minutes each way, £9 return).

Further information: call the Hungarian National Tourist Office on 00800 3600 0000 or visit www.gotohungary.co.uk.