The reconstruction of the Imperial Hotel is exemplary according to experts

Prague - Today, people will enter the renovated Imperial hotel in the center of Prague for the first time. However, this is not the only pre-war hotel in the metropolis that has recently been refurbished. Some renovations, such as those of the Palace or Savoy hotels, have not gone well according to historian Zdeněk Lukeš. But this is not the case with the Imperial hotel, said Prague's heritage director Jan Kněžínek to ČTK. He also claims that the renovation of a listed building into a hotel is always complicated. The situation is all the worse when the building has never been a hotel.
    "It is not dry, informal bureaucracy, but active cooperation on these magnificent delicacies. There is always a problem finding a level of compromise between heritage preservationists and architects," Kněžínek told ČTK. Heritage preservationists make concessions regarding wheelchair access. According to Kněžínek, they always try to find a way for disabled people to access the building.
    The Imperial hotel was built between 1913 and 1914. The exteriors in art deco style are complemented by late Art Nouveau mosaics inside, featuring cubist elements. The café, in particular, is adorned with intricate ceramic mosaics. It was these spaces that heritage preservationists supervised the most according to architect Aleš Cibulka from the company operating the hotel.
    "The tendency of heritage preservationists is to keep everything in its original state, which sometimes conflicts with hygiene or fire regulations," Cibulka stated. For example, the windows had become warped and rotten over the decades. The simple glazing also allowed street noise to filter through. Although the hotel chose new windows, they are a faithful replica of the original ones.
    In 1998, the Alcron hotel reopened after a two-year renovation, celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. "We had quite exhaustive negotiations with the heritage preservationists. Since it is a historic building, we couldn't change much. We primarily dealt with them about preserving the façade, the staircase, and the original marble floors," reported hotel manager Martina Tkáčová to ČTK.
    At the time of its establishment, the hotel was a symbol of luxury. It offered the latest technical advancements for its time: four guest elevators, a dishwashing machine, underground parking, a special electric signaling system, the most modern cooling equipment, automatic fire safety system, and even a dog hotel on the roof.
    Fifteen years ago, the Adria hotel was also renovated, which is partially protected by heritage preservation. According to Miloš Končický from Adria, the views of the heritage preservationists have evolved. In the first phase, they allowed plastic windows, but in 1999, during the expansion of the hotel into the adjacent building, they did not. They also believe that building between the Alfa and Juliš hotels, which had previously been rejected by heritage preservationists, could now be feasible.
    There was much discussion about the renovations of the Juliš hotel. "It was heavily criticized, but the building was not fundamentally destroyed," said architecture historian Zdeněk Lukeš to ČTK. He believes that the reconstruction of similar buildings is always a compromise - either the building will continue to deteriorate, or operations will resume within it, but with more or fewer modifications.
    Lukeš sees the biggest mistake in the fact that the café on the three floors of the hotel has disappeared. However, the original furnishings can be traced down, having gone through auctions and shops, and it would be possible to create replicas of them.
    According to Lukeš, the Prague hotels Palace and Savoy underwent insensitive reconstructions. The renovations in these cases meant the "gutting" of entire buildings and subsequent new constructions. The Palace at the corner of Panská and Jindřišská was renovated in the 1980s. Savoy in Pohořelci, which is cited as an example of the worst remodeling of a historical building, was completed in the early 1990s, but the form of the reconstruction was also decided during the previous regime.
    More often than the renovation of an existing hotel, new accommodation capacities are emerging in Prague through the reconstruction of historical buildings. Lukeš considers the Four Seasons hotel to be a relatively successful project, and more recently, the Mandarin hotel in Malá Strana.
    In contrast, he points to examples such as the Don Giovanni hotel in Vinohrady, built by Ivo Nahálka, the author of the aforementioned Palace hotel reconstruction. More recently, the Strahov hotel, whose investor became notorious for allegedly demolishing the Hunger Wall. However, experts claim it is primarily too bulky. A directly repulsive example is the demolition of several Gothic and Romanesque houses in Celetná street, where a hotel has been planned since the mid-1990s; however, the houses have remained empty and historically devalued for years.