Gellért 100, Hungarian Museum of Trade and Tourism, Budapest, 27 September 2018-3 March 2019

Over the century since its completion, the Danubius Gellért hotel has absorbed a fair bit of history. With the foundations laid in the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, work began in earnest in the First World War. Its first guests weren’t travellers, but Romanian soldiers, who occupied it while the war still raged. The German soldiers arrived in the Second World War.

Otherwise, the hotel has variously been a venue for glamorous balls; the place of choice for tourists visiting the city’s spas; and a playpark for Art Nouveau designers. It has been bombed, rebuilt, hosted a world-renowned chef, and remains in business to this day.

Not a bad run for a hotel. With such depth of history, the Danubius Gellért was bound to make a good topic for an exhibition. Gellért 100 tracks the whole timeline, showing the hotel to be living proof of the Hungarian and European stories, and a place tied to imperial might, mass tourism, and everything in between.

The Museum of Trade and Tourism was never going to be high up on the list of Budapest’s attractions. But it does provide the unusual opportunity to look at yourself in the mirror (metaphorically). By helping you to understand tourism as a phenomenon, the Museum also helps you to understand your own place as a 21st-century tourist. You’ll leave with amazing self-awareness, looking like a local as you cut through the ranks of gormless sightseers with their bum-bags and cameras round their necks.

Jonny Elling