Hotel International: Alexej Čepička’s dream began as a modest hostel
/PHOTO GALLERY/ Stalin’s cake, the Mad Confectioner’s Dream and the most expensive building in Czechoslovakia at the time. All this is the Hotel International, proudly towering over Prague’s Dejvice. Originally, it was supposed to be just a modest hostel.
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Hotel International in Prague.
| Photo: Wikipedia Commons
His appearance would fit more in old Manhattan, somewhere near the famous Empire State Building. His model was the Moscow skyscrapers, which, however, were essentially copies of American ones.
Monstrous but tucked away
The spiritual father of the International at that time was the Minister of Defense Alexej Čepička, the son-in-law of President Klement Gottwald. Originally, the hotel was supposed to be just a dormitory for non-Prague officers, but the plans changed even before the start of construction. At the beginning of the 1950s, Czechoslovakia hosted more and more official visits from the Soviet Union, which had nowhere to accommodate.
PHOTO: The Džbán swimming pool is closed, the owner wants to sell the land at the market price
Instead of modest quarters, a monstrous and magnificent non-public hotel was finally created according to the design of architect František Jeřábek and his colleagues from the Military Project Institute. Surprisingly, in a “tucked away” location, so even with its 16 floors and 88 meters, it does not disturb the panorama of Prague.
The dream of Comrade Čepicka
It is said that Alexei Čepička dreamed that “his” hotel would be visited by Comrade Stalin himself when it opened. This was matched by the grandiosity of the building: the use of expensive materials in the interiors and exteriors and the quality craftsmanship of every detail, including the tip of the tower decorated with a ruby glass star with internal lighting. The walls were decorated with ideological tapestries, mosaics, stained glass and sgraffito, the floors with thick carpets, stucco ceilings and crystal chandeliers. And although it was built at minimal cost by soldiers from the auxiliary technical battalions, the total expenses reached astronomical heights. The hotel could thus boast the unflattering label of the most expensive building of its time in the entire republic.
Moves across the river
Unfortunately, Cepiček’s dream did not come true for him. Stalin died three years before the completion of the International, but he still left something of himself in the brand new building – it began to be nicknamed Stalin’s cake, but also the Mad Confectioner’s Dream or, more prosaically, just Čepicka’s Barak. By the end of the 1950s, the idea of a luxury hostel for the Soviets receded into the background, and the International was transferred under Čedok to become a regular accommodation facility. The best hotel was stolen from him by the Intercontinental in 1974, and the nobles and some of the tourists moved to the opposite bank of the Vltava.
International became a more affordable form of accommodation, cultural events such as Družba evenings were also held. In 1996 and 1997, the hotel underwent extensive reconstruction and today it is part of a Ukrainian hotel chain.