• Home
  • City
    • ALBANIA
    • AMSTERDAM
    • ANDORRA
    • ANNECY
    • ANTWERP
    • ATHENS
    • AUSTRIA
    • AVIGNON
    • BARCELONA
    • BELARUS
    • BELGIUM
    • BERLIN
    • BILBAO
    • BORDEAUX
    • BRNO
    • BRUSSELS
    • BUDAPEST
    • BULGARIA
    • CAEN
    • CALAIS
    • CROATIA
    • CZECH_REPUBLIC
    • DEBRECEN
    • DENMARK
    • DIJON
    • DUBLIN
    • ESTONIA
    • FINLAND
    • FLORENCE
    • FRANKFURT
    • GENEVA
    • GENOA
    • GERMANY
    • GLASGOW
    • GREECE
    • HANNOVER
    • HELSINKI
    • HUNGARY
    • ICELAND
    • INNSBRUCK
    • IRELAND
    • ISTANBUL
    • KRAKOW
    • LIECHTENSTEIN
    • LILLE
    • LIMERICK
    • LISBOA
    • LITHUANIA
    • LONDON
    • LUXEMBOURG
    • LYON
europe-cities.com
  • Home
  • City
    • ALBANIA
    • AMSTERDAM
    • ANDORRA
    • ANNECY
    • ANTWERP
    • ATHENS
    • AUSTRIA
    • AVIGNON
    • BARCELONA
    • BELARUS
    • BELGIUM
    • BERLIN
    • BILBAO
    • BORDEAUX
    • BRNO
    • BRUSSELS
    • BUDAPEST
    • BULGARIA
    • CAEN
    • CALAIS
    • CROATIA
    • CZECH_REPUBLIC
    • DEBRECEN
    • DENMARK
    • DIJON
    • DUBLIN
    • ESTONIA
    • FINLAND
    • FLORENCE
    • FRANKFURT
    • GENEVA
    • GENOA
    • GERMANY
    • GLASGOW
    • GREECE
    • HANNOVER
    • HELSINKI
    • HUNGARY
    • ICELAND
    • INNSBRUCK
    • IRELAND
    • ISTANBUL
    • KRAKOW
    • LIECHTENSTEIN
    • LILLE
    • LIMERICK
    • LISBOA
    • LITHUANIA
    • LONDON
    • LUXEMBOURG
    • LYON

PRAGUE

Hotel Prague: An exceptional building with a turbulent history and a tragic end

Sugar Mizzy May 14, 2019

She collaborated on the monograph of the hotel, which no longer exists today, with the book’s editor, sculptor Pavel Karous, documentary filmmaker Martin Kohout and art and architecture historian Ladislav Zikmund-Lender.

The Dejvický Hotel Prague, definitively demolished in 2013, is an example of how we are (or rather are not) able to cope with the collective memory of the second half of the twentieth century. Milena Bartlová talks about the difficulties that collective memory brings us, and points to certain parallels from the 1970s and 1980s, when, on the contrary, the historic city centers were systematically liquidated so that a “new, better socialist face” could be imprinted on them.




Book cover Hotel Praha

“The story of the Hotel Praha is not only a story of unique architecture, but also a story of the transformation of Czech society from real socialism to real capitalism. The story of the Hotel Praha is in its beginning also the story of a victim of the arrogance of power, “he says of the prestigious end of the expensive state. From the beginning, the hotel was designed as a luxurious and representative accommodation for official government and party visits to the Communist Party. The Central Committee of the party decided on its construction in December 1969, ie at a turning point, when the period of so-called normalization began in Czechoslovakia after the occupation of the Warsaw Pact troops.




Hotel Prague, terrace (Vaclav Dolejs), ceramic jardiniere

Hotel Prague, terrace (Vaclav Dolejs), ceramic jardiniere|photo: Květoslav Přibyl

The luxurious to frivolous interior design of the hotel for party guests of the Communist Party paradoxically followed the American pop culture trends of the 1960s and 1970s.


Pavel Karous

As the authors of the book explain, although the client of the building was a normalization set, its architecture in fact followed the most progressive trend of the 1960s. In 1971, a one-round competition was announced, from which the architect Jan Sedláček and his team emerged as the winner, who managed to connect the hotel with the landscape in an extraordinary way for the architecture of the hotel. Ladislav Zikmund-Lender even puts the “biological and liquid morphology” of the hotel building in the book in connection with contemporary trends in world architecture.




Hotel Prague, social hall (Břetislav Benda)

Hotel Prague, social hall (Břetislav Benda) |photo: Jiří Benák

Vasil Biľak was entrusted with the supervision of the construction

Vasil Biľak, an infamous supporter of the Soviet invasion and normalization, was in charge of supervising the entire building by the party’s central committee. At the time, he was acting secretary for foreign relations and ideology. However, as Pavel Karous explained, the party potentates did not interfere in the very concept of the building and its artistic equipment. “Paradoxically, the luxurious to frivolous design of the hotel by KSČ party guests followed American pop culture trends and for seventy years,” he says. The whole situation is illustrated by the fact that the works for the Hotel Prague were also created by famous glass artists, husband and wife Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová, who were expelled from the Communist Party in the early 1970s.




Book Hotel Prague

Hotel Praha was opened in 1981 for party guests, such as Yasser Arafat and Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, and the fact that the State Security was closely monitored gave rise to a number of colorful legends about his “dark past”. We will no longer look into the actual StB archive. The files concerning the luxury party hotel and its guests were carefully shredded immediately after the Velvet Revolution.

The story of the Hotel Praha is not only a story of unique architecture, but also a story of the transformation of Czech society from real socialism to real capitalism. The story of the Hotel Praha is at the beginning and end of the story of the victim of the arrogance of power.


Pavel Karous

At the beginning of 1990, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia relinquished the right to permanent use of a hotel in the capital city of Prague, which subsequently transferred its benefits to the administration of Prague 6. At that time, however, the hotel was obsolete in many respects and needed modernization. In 1998, however, the representatives of Prague 6 decided not to take responsibility for the future fate of the Hotel Praha, and the first attempt to sell it took place. In the same year, Pavel Bém became the new mayor of Prague 6. Documentary filmmaker Martin Kohout recalls that the hotel was eventually transferred to Falkon Capital, an entity with no experience in the hotel industry. Rooster your serious claims about people who are still in top politics in the book Hotel Prague evidenced by a detailed note-taking apparatus that refers to period documents, including wall records.




Demolition of the Hotel Prague, 2014

Demolition of the Hotel Prague, 2014|photo: Dan Materna,Profimedia / MAFRA

In February 2013, Milena Bartlová and Pavel Karous submitted an immovable cultural monument to the Hotel Praha at the initiative of the Ministry of Culture. The then Ministry of Culture, Alena Hanáková, decided not to initiate proceedings at all. The final “death sentence” over Prague, which stood in the immediate vicinity of Petr Kellner’s residence, was handed down by its last owner – Kellner’s PPF corporation, which was a building that was an extraordinary and multi-layered document of the time, demolished a year later…

Related Posts

PRAGUE /

Trial with a tyrant: Jakub tortured his girlfriend and her children – he bit his son, threw his head on the ground

PRAGUE /

Prague – negotiations on the municipal coalition reach the final stage: The program and composition of the council are being decided

PRAGUE /

The renovated historical tram K2 went on the tracks, it received a symbolic slo

‹ The excellent experience of the LP concert was spoiled only by the sound › Full trains, queues for refreshments. Over 26,000 tourists went on the Prague-Prčice march iROZHLAS

Recent Posts

  • The table for the world cup in orienteering in Norway – Radio Haugaland
  • Strong earthquake in the south of Turkey – NRK Norway – Overview of news … – NRK
  • The festivals in Northern Norway and Sami art – ht.no
  • Heavy snowfall on the mountains overnight to Monday in Northern Norway – Address
  • When the pasta came to Norway: – We thought it was a vegetable – forskning.no

Categories

  • ALBANIA
  • AMSTERDAM
  • ANDORRA
  • ANNECY
  • ANTWERP
  • ATHENS
  • AUSTRIA
  • AVIGNON
  • BARCELONA
  • BELARUS
  • BELGIUM
  • BILBAO
  • BORDEAUX
  • BRNO
  • BRUSSELS
  • BUDAPEST
  • BULGARIA
  • CAEN
  • CALAIS
  • City
  • COLOGNE
  • COPENHAGEN
  • CORK
  • CROATIA
  • CZECH_REPUBLIC
  • DEBRECEN
  • DENMARK
  • DIJON
  • ESTONIA
  • FINLAND
  • FLORENCE
  • FRANKFURT
  • GENEVA
  • GENOA
  • GREECE
  • HELSINKI
  • HUNGARY
  • ICELAND
  • INNSBRUCK
  • ISTANBUL
  • KRAKOW
  • LIECHTENSTEIN
  • LISBOA
  • LITHUANIA
  • LUXEMBOURG
  • LYON
  • MALTA
  • MARSEILLE
  • MILAN
  • MOLDOVA
  • MONACO
  • MUNICH
  • NAPLES
  • NETHERLANDS
  • NICE
  • NORWAY
  • PARIS
  • PISA
  • POLAND
  • PORTUGAL
  • PRAGUE
  • ROME
  • ROUEN
  • RUSSIA
  • SALZBURG
  • SAN_MARINO
  • SIENA
  • SLOVAKIA
  • SLOVENIA
  • STRASBOURG
  • SWEDEN
  • SWITZERLAND
  • THESSALONIKI
  • TOULOUSE
  • TURKEY
  • UK_ENGLAND
  • UKRAINE
  • VENICE
  • VERONA
  • VIENNA
  • WARSAW
  • ZURICH

Archives

  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • November 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • September 2008
  • June 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2007
  • January 2002
  • January 1970

↑