The Hotel International Prague is a four-star hotel located in the Dejvice quarter of Prague, in the Czech Republic. It was completed in 1956 in the socialist realism style, and is a Czech cultural monument.
The hotel is located in the Dejvice quarter of the Prague 6 municipal district, and was recognized on the list of Czech cultural monuments on 4 July 2000. Construction of the hotel took place from 1952 to 1956, with interior decorations finished in 1957. The hotel was the idea of Alexej Cepicka, the Czechoslovakian Minister of Defence, who envisioned a monument to the newly formed Fourth Czechoslovak Republic that would reinforce ties with the Soviet Union.
The original plans were commissioned from the college of architects at the Military Project Institute in 1951, and called the site Hotel Družba, the Russian word for friendship. The original function was military accommodations in a rectangular floor plan to house out-of-town officers. This draft was never sent to the public archives, rather it was kept secret. The final construction site for the new hotel was chosen in 1951, and architect František Jerábek worked with the military on a new set of plans, which were more complicated and included a luxury hotel. Plans were revised in the late construction stage to add an extra two steps on the already finished central staircase, to accommodate one step for each of the forty-four Czechoslovak generals at that time.
When it was completed in 1957, the hotel had the largest capacity in Czechoslovakia. The Hotel Družba was opened up to public use and its name was switched to the Hotel Cedok in 1957, sharing the name of the local travel agency for tourism in the Czech Republic.
After the communist regime fell during the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the hotel became part of the Holiday Inn chain. The original illuminated communist-inspired red star that adorned the top of the building's spire was changed to green, the color of the Holiday Inn logo. The star was later changed to a gold color in 2007, and the hotel subsequently became part of the Crowne Plaza chain. The hotel returned to using the Hotel International named on 1 July 2014, when it was sold by the InterContinental Hotels Group, and purchased by Gerstner Imperial Hotels and Residences of Austria. It has been part of the Mozart Hotel Group since 2015.
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The author of this painting is Karel Stolar. Karel Stolar is the book illustrator who is dedicated to creating drawings sights. You can find this painting in book 'Pražské domy vyprávejí - VI.'
This book is one of a twelve-part series of books describing structural changes and the development of cultural-historical monuments of Prague (houses, villas and palaces, library, banks, school, museum, hospital, farm, etc.).