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LUXURY TRAVEL - CZECH REPUBLIC
HOTEL
JALTA – PRAGUE
Boutique Luxury Hotel with Cold War History
The
Hotel Jalta of Praque is perhaps totally unique among the world’s
luxury hotels. Certainly there are other hotels which hold UNESCO World
Heritage status for their cultural history, design or location, but none
of those have a nuclear bomb shelter in the basement. The fictional James
Bond might be found in a stylish design hotel like the Jalta, but here
the hotel itself was a spy center. It is a boutique deluxe hotel with
a great location, but a story to tell as well. When the world divided
into east and west after the Second World War and a wall was being built
in Berlin, the Communist masters of Prague
looked at their ravaged city, deciding how to rebuild. In the waning
days of WWII in 1945, an American bomb had destroyed a building on Wenceslas
Square, so a prime piece of real estate in the heart of the city was available.
After
the war, a plan for building a hotel on the site started to take shape
and President
Antonin Zapotocky promoted the concept of building
a first-class international luxury hotel for all the dignitaries coming
to Prague. However, more than just hotel, the construction would disguise
the building of a nuclear bomb shelter underneath to serve as the military
headquarters of the Warsaw Pact, just in case the H-bombs began to
fall. And since the luxurious accommodations would be filled with
foreign ambassadors
and financial ministers, why not wire it for sound, so all those secret
conversations could be recorded by the security spy services and hire
prostitutes to entice bedsheet revelations.
Today,
the Hotel Jalta has been overshadowed a bit in the competition of modern
international hotel chains, but remains one of the best known
boutique hotels of Prague with a central location on Wenceslas Square
and retains a certain cool hipness. Sure you can enjoy exceptional
service and contemporary comfort, but take a moment to look at your
surroundings
and step back in time to another era. The design of the Hotel Jalta
is one of the masterworks of Czech born architect Antonin Tenzer. When
it
was built, it was one of the most advanced
buildings in Prague with an architectural esthetic which matched the
ideology and politic timber of its time. The hotel design is a style
called Sorela,
meaning ironically “Stalin’s Baroque”, influenced
by a mix of pure functionality and a proletariate interpretation of
Art
Deco, with figures of idealized peasants replacing the gods and nymphs
of western fancy. Some of this design philosophy can be seen in the
bathroom
fixtures and travertine tiles, or closer up, if staying in one of
the street facing suites, where strong socialist relief statuary fugures guard the
balconies.
The
Como Restaurant and Café at the Hotel Jalta is one of Prague’s
best popular restaurants with its terrace view of Wenceslas
Square, serving Mediterranian specialties and traditional Czech cuisine,
fresh fish every day and the special Tsarskaya oysters. Live music is
played
in the still cool bar with an extensive drink and wine list, where ladies
under the
control of spy masters once enticed international money dealers to
reveal secrets, now attracts a hip business crowd and Andy Warhol’s
portrait of Franz Kafka keeps a watchful eye over the lobby. © Bargain
Luxury Travel
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Hotel Jalta
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