History

Jan Vejrych drew the plans for Hotel Paris at a moment when Prague’s bourgeoisie was commissioning buildings that announced civic confidence at every cornice. Completed in 1904, the hotel opened as a luxury address in the Staré Město district, its corner position on U Obecního domu giving maximum street presence. The ceramic mosaics that decorate the restaurant interior were created by painter Josef Köhler, whose work gives the ground-floor dining spaces a warmth that no later renovation has erased.

The hotel passed through the turbulence of the 20th century and, after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, was restituted to its pre-communist owners. In 1991 the Czech government returned the property to the Brandejs family, in whose hands it remains. The 1984 cultural monument designation had already protected the building from the homogenising pressures of the socialist era.

Literary renown arrived through Bohumil Hrabal, who used the hotel as a central location in I Served the King of England (1971) — a novel later adapted as an internationally released film. The association has made Hotel Paris a pilgrimage point for readers as well as architecture enthusiasts.