Kálmán Mikszáth: From the Casino to the Beleznay Garden, Pesti Hírlap, 1882

Budapest's first entertainment district was Király Street and its surroundings. Nearly every third house operated as a nightclub, brothel, café chantant, variety show, brettli, musical coffee house, music hall, zengeráj, tingli tangli, or revue. Between 1890 and 1914, Vienna and New York combined had fewer nightclubs than Budapest. Only Paris and Berlin surpassed the Hungarian capital in the number of entertainment venues.

Due to its scandalous nature, one of the most famous cabarets was the Blue Cat (Kék Macska), which opened its doors in 1855 at Király Street 15. The establishment, considered the precursor of Hungarian variety shows, attracted audiences with songs by Béla Zerkovitz and plays by Antal Oroszi based on fairground humor, with actresses and dancers also active as courtesans who could be approached after the show.

A regular guest at the nightclub was Count Miklós Szemere, a diplomat infamous for his hazard and card games, who was the first to introduce judo and jiu-jitsu to Europe. At the request of the ambassador, in 1906, the Japanese martial artist Kichisaburo Sasaki moved to Budapest to teach combat sports.

Among his five visits to Hungary, the ill-fated Habsburg-Lorraine Rudolf, Crown Prince, accompanied by the Prince of Wales, visited the nightclub on May 15, 1881. The Prince of Wales went on to become King Edward VII of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India twenty years later.

According to contemporary rumors, Edward fell in love with the singer Róza Waldau (Jeanette), who was already engaged to a cab driver, while watching the farce "Engagement at the Horse Race." The romantic pursuit was abruptly halted by Queen Victoria, ruler of the British Empire, with a resounding remark, "There are enough whores in the family, why bring in another one?"

On the evening of October 6, 1888, Herbert von Bismarck, the eldest son of the German Chancellor, Prussian State Minister, got so drunk that he climbed naked onto the stage to show himself to the audience. To everyone's surprise, the police escorted not the nude prince but the audience home.

At that moment, the young prince went to hide in one of the salons on the nightclub's third floor, where he noticed a small group engaged in intimacy, including Count Hoyos Margit. The German politician joined in, and the act went so well that Bismarck married Margit in Vienna on June 21, 1892.

Others who danced at the Blue Cat included Prince Louis Philippe Albert of Orleans and his entourage, as well as King Milan I of Serbia, who, along with his nearly 500-person entourage, spent over a month consuming 1.2% of Serbia's GDP.

When the Blue Cat's in-house writer, Antal Oroszi, branched out on his own in 1889 and opened the entertainment center Foliès Caprice, the glory days of the nightclub on Király Street began to fade. The corner house was then purchased by Count László Pejačević, Ban of Croatia-Slavonia-Dalmatia, who played a significant role in the establishment of the 1868 Hungarian-Croatian Compromise. The renowned establishment finally closed its doors in 1893."