A Wes Anderson Hotel For Real In Prague

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Grand Budapest Hotel, which opened in 2014, is film director Wes Anderson’s greatest homage to Europe’s Belle Epoque traditions, especially the luxury hotels that sprang up between the end of the 19th century until the start of the Second World War. Anderson’s meticulously crafted visual language; all symmetrical compositions, rich colour palettes, vintage typography, and obsessive attention to period detail references a period in Europe, where, for the first time, travel wasn’t just the preserve of the ultra-rich.

No real hotel delivered more to Grand Budapest Hotel’s vision board than Grand Hotel Europa in Prague. Situated prominently on Wenceslas Square, it was built by Karel Sroubek in 1889 as one of Europe’s most glamorous hotels.

I first came across this hotel in the early 1990s, as the Czech Republic navigated – with notable success – the realities of the Velvet Revolution. As I entered it for the first time, the Art Nouveau façade gave way worn upholstery, elaborate mouldings, and vintage elevator systems and a clientele that encompassed backpackers like me and a clientele that were of an age to have to experienced both communism and capitalism.

Luxury Past and Present

It was – like everywhere in the then Czechoslovakia – exceptionally cheap to anyone with Western currency. The sparkling wine – called champagne on the menu – was Russian, the food solidly Mittel European, large on pork and dumplings with cabbage. The result was completely was enchanting, including the brusque Communist-era service. Undoubtedly one of the most beautiful purpose-built hotels in Prague, I would go each time I visited. The hotel closed in 2013 and I missed being able to sit at its spindly chairs and watch the city parade past.

Now though, just as Anderson’s films offer guests temporary residence with a carefully curated fantasy, so does the Grand Hotel Europa in its current form as one of the newest outposts of a the W hotel. The decade-long restoration includes returning the original murals of European cities, the Art Nouveau rooms and the construction of a separate nine-storey tower with that Prague hotel rarity, a rooftop bar, Above.

There’s the Extreme Wow presidential suite – 900 square feet of floor to ceiling windows and interior sparkle and in the basement – also a rarity – a swimming pool and spa. But it’s a very winning co-production – especially when it comes to service, which is utterly charming; from the English barman who has lived in the Czech capital for nearly a decade to the spa therapists and the plugged-in concierge team, none of whom were born when the Berlin Wall fell.

Culinary Highs Amid Art Nouveau Splendour

Alongside its carefully polished Art Nouveau heritage, it lives up to its name – both as a W and as Grand Hotel Europa. Le Petit Beefbar, which has reseeded itself from its original Monaco outpost across the continent, incorporates Czech riffs with wagyu goulash and tonkatsu schnitzel. Bisou has DJs and the subterranean bar has a properly experiential speakeasy entrance specially designed glasses (the Czech Republic is famous for its crystal drinkware) overseen by local cocktail legend Jan Sebak. The two areas are linked in delightfully indulgent ways, including a darkly glamorous corridor swagged with flower chandeliers and a giant eye behind the bar, with crystal eyelashes.

Yes, it’s flashier now, but the man who conceived this building – Karel Sroubek – was as much as a cultural curator as Anderson and knew about spectacle. Franz Kafka gave his final public reading here. It only acquired the name – Grand Hotel Europa in the 1950s, an ornately gilded rejoiner to Moscow from the not-particularly-committed-to-Communisim Czechs and so it remains today in a very pleasing present.