Szabo Ervin Library

A couple of years ago, the quality of my travel improved radically.

I started immersing myself in the culture of my destinations, learning everywhere I went, and seeing things differently. Not because I got older and wiser. Not because my taste level improved. But because I started consulting Atlas Obscura.

Without Atlas Obscura, I would have visited Nashville without hitting up Hatch Show Print. I might have left Los Angeles without seeing Watts Towers or the Bradbury Building. I would likely have been completely bored in New Mexico (instead I toured Earthships, visited Taos Pueblo, and saw Los Alamos).

But, most tragically, without Atlas Obscura (and this isn’t #sponcon, I swear!) I never would have known about Szabo Ervin Library in Budapest.

Szabo Ervin Library is a total Jekyll/Hyde experience. One half is a standard modern library – ugly and utilitarian (but with tons of plugs for all your modern devices!); the other half is a 19th century count’s palace purchased by the city for use as a library nearly 100 years ago.  It’s basically Versailles + Soho House + Wes Anderson – a spectacular mash-up of soaring ceilings, over-the-top architectural details, and foreboding material choices. Hungarian neo-baroque, apparently.

What’s most amazing about Szabo Ervin Library is how underutilized it is. In New York, this place would be mobbed, overrun with book lovers and obsessed Instagrammers (guilty on both counts). But in Budapest, it was positively peaceful. Curling up in those sun-warmed armchairs with a book was one of my happiest moments of 2017.