Hotel InterContinental Prague

InterContinental Prague

InterContinental Prague View of the InterContinental Prague from Pařížské ulice.

InterContinental Prague
General information
Type Hotel
Architectural style Brutalist
Location Old Town, Prague
Address InterContinental Prague, Pařížská 30, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic
Town or city Prague
Country Czech Republic
Coordinates 50°5′28.95″N 14°25′6.17″E / 50.0913750°N 14.4183806°E
Construction started 1968
Completed 1974
Owner InterContinental Hotels Group
Technical details
Floor count 9
Website
http://www.icprague.com/

InterContinental Prague was built as part of the InterContinental Hotels Group in the 1960s and 70s. This upscale hotel has a total capacity of 372 rooms including suites. It offers 14 function rooms and a congress hall for up to 580 delegates. It provides comprehensive hotel services. It comprises a panoramic restaurant Zlatá Praha, a breakfast restaurant Primátor and the Duke's Bar & Café. A Health Club & Spa with its swimming-pool, sauna, gym and Spa & Beauty programme is also a key feature of the hotel.

When back in the sixties the managers of the American company Tower International ING decided to invest in developing a large international hotel in Prague, the opinions of where it should be located were varied. The chosen location was to be a part of the Vltava river spinal axisin light of the intended social function of the hotel. Another prerequisite was that the building should occupy a central position within the heart of the city. The bridge-head of Čechův Bridge known as Náměstí Curieových square today, where gunpowder used to be made a hundred years before, was originally intended to build one of the faculties of a university complex in. However, the City Hall dismissed this idea in the end.

The five-star hotel became a priority. A decision was made. The hotel would occupy an attractive location with a fascinating view of Prague Castle and Letná Gardens. Right in a square extending at the very end of an exclusive shopping boulevard Pařížská and bordering on the former Jewish Ghetto. It was just here that a foundation-stone was laid in the second half of the 1960sto launch the construction of a centre of the most luxurious accommodation one could get in Prague, or in the whole Czechoslovakia of that time for the matter - the InterContinental Prague. Exactly forty years will have passed since its official opening on 7 December 2014.

Hotel history

The proposal to develop a hotel was approved in1965 and the company InterContinental Hotels Corporation signed a contract with the Czech investor Čedok two years later. The construction itself, which should have been completed by 1970, finally took four years longer and the test operations could commence no sooner than in August 1974. It was in December of the same year that the hotel opened its doors wide and the life of the InterContinental Prague could finally take off at full speed.

The exterior parts of the building were designed by a team of prominent Czech architects led by Karel Filsak in the 1960s. The modern interiors arose under the baton of architect Jan Šrámek and his team.

Filsak's pioneering brutalism

The monolithic construction made of reinforced concrete was designed by the architects as an independent building with the main entrance on its southern side. They created its facade using raw concrete with a clinker veneer made from brick-clay. It is because of the use of rough concrete surfaces that their style is often referred to as Czech brutalism (derived from the French béton brut – raw concrete). Originally it was an architectural "sculptural" style based on exceptional space solutions. Abroad, brutalism is represented namely by the iconic constructions performed by the architects Le Corbusier (Jaoul in Neuilly near Paris), M. Safdie (Habitat complex in Montreal, Canada) or K.Tange (Cultural Centre in Nichinan). The style culminated in the half of the 20thcentury.

In spite of its popularity, brutalismwas somewhat suppressed in the construction of the InterContinental to respect the historic nature of the location itself. The creators refined the facade using brown ceramic facings to form a pattern of structural strips, thanks to which the hotel may remind one of a temple. On the contrary, brutalism did appear on the surface with full strength in the form of segmented grooved surfaces of the facade and a forward shift of the roof-top storey accommodating the panoramic Zlatá Praha restaurant.

The InterContinental Prague was the first brutalist constructionin the former Czechoslovakia. It is also justly regarded as the finest-quality brutalist construction in Czech Republic today. Filsak and Šrámek have notably contributed to the transformation of Czechoslovak architecture. Their early work include, for example, the Public Prosecution Headquarters in Brazil, Delhi and Nairobi or the Václav Havel Airport in Prague. The Embassy in London has even received an award from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). Filsak drew inspiration for his InterContinental design from Denys Lasdun's London Royal National Theatre and namely from the Royal Festival Hall. What is of particular interest about the InterContinental structure is the fact that, although the state had generally been adamant about socialist realism in the then period of a so-called normalisation, Filsak and Šrámek managed to enforce a brand new style, whereby Czech architecture reached a world-class level. The structural improvement relay was taken over from Filsakby his long-term collaborator Karel Koutský and, after Koutský’s death in mid 90s, by architect Vladimíra Leníčková, Filsak´s student. She was implementing the reconstruction in the 1990s still together with Koutský, but the refurbishments carried out in the years 2002 and 2012 were already managed all by herself as a head of the architectural studio Len+K.

A harmony of the interior artistic styles

The hotel had a much-in-detail elaborated creative concept in place since its day one. The concept comprised all sorts of artistic materials: wood, metal, textile, ceramics and namely glass, the most significant Czech commodity. The InterContinental was to become a sort of a "glass hotel" in principle. The interior parts were meant to bring various historical styles together in a harmonious manner. State-of-the-art processes and resources were employed by the architects to create a frame of the interior. On the other hand, history manifested itself in the interior parts through various pieces of equipment, furnishing and accessories. Under the hands of designer Rathouský, the graphically dateless official emblem of the hotel revived, which has been glowing above the entrance door up to the present day, as well as did the pictograms signposting the individual function rooms.

Šrámek and his team were not the only architects to share in the interior designing process. It was contributed to also by Č. Kafka, H. Demartini, M. Hejný, J. Klimeš, F. Ronovský and R. Roubíček, as well as by other prominent Czech designers. A portion of the public areas was designed by two of a trio of the so-called "Brussels" architects, F. Cubr and Z. Pokorný. They are credited with three significant folklore areas – the ground floor restaurant Primátor (a so-called Guildhall), the now defunct wine restaurant Mázhaus in the hotel basement and the night club with live music originally tuned to the atmosphere of the ancient Prague fables, which closed in the 1990s.

Cultural heritage

The present-day interiors are a mere fragment of the original concept. The premises have been modernized over the years and most of the hotel’s original movable property failed to be preserved. However, some of the original elements have remained ingrained in the existing interiors up to the present day.

One can still spot a wooden compartment ceiling with guild heraldry paintings in the Primátor breakfast restaurant. It was also for this reference to the ancient Prague guilds that the restaurant used to be called Guildhall in its early days. Also the "boarding" of walls has been successfully preserved at the Primátor, which is actually a copy of the vertical seams structure used on the facade. Wooden details represented by pieces of furniture and by a partition wall have been preserved either. Also the stained glass windows are original. One can still admire the imaginatively shaped ceiling lights resembling grapes of lustrous gold spheres inside the panoramic Zlatá Praha restaurant.

Crystal chandeliers assembled from glass sticks decorate the interior of the Congress Hall, which has retained its original form as one of just a few hotel spaces. For years, the corridor near the so-called Hunting Rooms had boasted posts carved from ashwood, a so-called "line of trees" symbolising the forest and natural wealth of the former Czechoslovakia. A couple of these posts tower above the hotel lobby today. The Duke’s Bar & Café in the hotel lobby are divided by a screentaking the form of a wooden wall that gives a highly dynamic impression. There is still an original girder ceiling in the Club Lounge, even if shadowed by a lower ceiling today.

The Legend today

In the 40 years of its existence, the InterContinental has become an integral and inherent part of Prague’s history and architecture. It has without any doubt considerably contributed to the development of tourism in Prague, too.

Over its four decades, the hotel has been visited by an array of famous personalities. Politicians, world-format show-business stars and sportsmen were all meeting here. The hotel has had the honour of accommodating Michael Jackson, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Barbra Streisand, Depeche Mode and the Rolling Stones. Taking turns at the hotel were also prominent personalities from the world political scene, such as Madeleine Albright, Margaret Thatcher, Richard Nixon, Francois Mitterrand, George Bush Sr. and Hillary Clinton. The world of sports was represented by for example the Formula 1 racer Nicky Lauda who also came to stay with us. The hotel has recently hosted the Czech Fed Cup tennis queens, too.

Gallery

External links

Coordinates: 50°5′28.95″N 14°25′6.17″E / 50.0913750°N 14.4183806°E