Hotel Bristol: kwintesencja luksusu
The Bristol Hotel, one of the oldest and most luxurious Warsaw hotels, has welcomed many notorious guest from all over the world.
Few people know that the Warsaw Bristol hotel would have never been had it not been for the Polish pianist, composer and politician Ignacy Paderewski. In 1985 Paderewski together with Stanisław Roszkowski and Edmund Zaremba bought the Tarnowski palace and corresponding plot of land, located on 42/44 Krakowskie Przedmieście St.
Paderewski and his partners decided that the palace should be demolished in order to build a hotel, but not just your average hotel. It was meant to be the most beautiful of a kind in the city. The hotel was erected between 1899 and 1901. Apparently, while the hotel was under construction, the whole of Warsaw wanted to see the progress since rumour had it that the restaurant would remain open until two o’clock in the morning!
The design of the Bristol was created by Władysław Marconi, although Tadeusz Stryjeński and Franciszek Mączyński won the architectural competition announced by the owners of the square. They designed a building in the Art Nouveau style, but ultimately Marconi’s monumental proposal with neo-Renaissance façade was commissioned. Some claimed that the inspiration came from the nearby Beyer tenement house.
The first guests were welcomed in the Bristol on October 19, 1901. At that time, the building was extremely modern: it had its own power plant, central heating, refractory partition walls, ceilings and floors, as well as 11 lifts that moved at a speed of 110 cm/s. Interestingly, there were 6 telephone numbers installed in the hotel (there were only 800 in the whole of Warsaw at that time).
The guests had at their disposal 200 luxuriously finished rooms and suites. The number 109 on the first floor boasted the most interesting Art Nouveau finish.
The golden age of the hotel arrived in the 1930s. Wojciech Kossak had his painting studio at the hotel, and Jan Kiepura sang from the balcony for Warsaw residents. Earlier, the famous operetta artist Lucyna Messal performed in the Bristol, and Maria Skłodowska-Curie herself organized the ball on the occasion of receiving the Nobel Prize.
After the World War II, the hotel was nationalised and became property of the State Treasury. Renovated in 1945, it was headquarters to many state institutions; embassies and diplomatic missions were stationed there, too, including Mexico, Canada or Brazil. The hotel’s new design was in line with the direction of socialist realism in art.
As the years went by, the Bristol suffered from negligence. Hurriedly renovated and state management led to the reduction of its category in the 1970s. Finally, the decision was made to rebuild and refurbish it. The building was closed in 1981 and re-opened 12 years later, after the political transformation. The Bristol regained its former brightness and splendor, and its opening after the renovation was graced by the presence of the famous Iron Lady, the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Today, the Bristol hotel is synonymous with luxury and top-quality service. There are 205 five-star standard rooms, the Marconi restaurant offering Mediterranean cuisine, the Bristol Wine Bar which will appeal primarily to wine lovers (a really interesting card of wines) and the Vienna-inspired Café Bristol. There is also the Bristol Spa. The most famous guests of recent years were Mick Jagger, Naomi Campbell and Jacques Chirac.
