Prague without a guide-book: the Crowne Plaza Hotel

Crowne Plaza Hotel, Prague, Czech Republic

Crowne Plaza Hotel, Prague, Czech Republic

Yet another of my wanderings around Prague by tram took me on route 20 to Podbab, where I found an astonishing Crowne Plaza Hotel which I considered couldn’t possibly have been built as a hotel.

Sure enough, it turns out to be a defence-ministry building, the creation of the very powerful Stalinist Minister of Defence, Alexej Čepička (1910-1990) who, if his Wikipedia entry is to be believed [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexej_%C4%8Cepi%C4%8Dka], came straight from Central Casting.

According to Wikipedia, its nuclear shelter for 600 people is now the staff cloakroom.

Though the hotel website [http://www.ichotelsgroup.com/crowneplaza/hotels/us/en/prague/prgcs/hoteldetail?cm_mmc=mdpr-_-GoogleMapsCZ-_-cp-_-prgcs] describes its architecture as Art Deco, it was actually constructed in 1952-4.

A Czech website describes the style as “an original combination of the architecture of Socialist Reali known as Sorela, and art-deco of the American type, completed by Czech artists and craftsmen”:  http://www.visitprague.cz/en/hotels/crowne-plaza-hotel-prague.html.

The room-rates aren’t at all bad:  I could stay there.

 

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