"The leading luxury hotel in St Petersburg, a 19th-century rococo palace, full of history and Russian riches."
Nevsky Prospect, St Petersburg's legendary main drag, is a welter of traffic jams, rattling trams, boutiques, cafes and bookstores. Just off it is the Grand Hotel Europe, a luxury hotel that has outlasted the cultures of both Tsars and commissars. Within its guest registers, dating from 1875, are scrawled the signatures of Dostoevsky, Gorky, Stravinsky, Pavlova and George Bernard Shaw. The menus of course still flaunt caviar.
The facilities
St Petersburg - think Pushkin, Peter the Great, Tchaikovsky, Crime and Punishment, the Winter Palace - is an architectural show-stopper. While cities in the imperialist West were going vertical, over-awing their citizenry with skyscrapers, the equally imperial Mother Russia was doing likewise on the horizontal plane: her great buildings are low-rise monsters - stretch palaces and wall-eyed ministries that go on for blocks, if not forever.
Around the corner from this luxury hotel, you can duck into the vaulted alcoves of the Literaturnoye Cafe on Nevsky Prospekt for coffee and cake; a violinist and pianist play in the next alcove. Other than a cappuccino machine and a few coats of paint, probably not much has changed since January 1837 when the poet Alexander Pushkin - author of Eugene Onegin - took his last meal here before setting out for a pistol duel. Pushkin lost and so did Russian literature.
The rooms
History ambushes you here, even in the city's serial names: Petrograd, Stalingrad, Leningrad, St Petersburg. The Grand Hotel Europe was the first five-star luxury hotel in Russia. Its roots date back to the 1820s, and for more than 150 years it has stood at the centre of the city's social and commercial life. Completely renovated in 1991, the hotel is more than a throwback to the days of caviar and samovars. The guest rooms are contemporary and comfortable, although not necessarily world-class five-star in their appointments. The baroque façade, as well as its lovely, original art nouveau interiors have been well preserved. And, mercifully, there's no Tsarbucks Coffee franchise plonked in the foyer.
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Address: Nevsky prospect, Mikhailovskaya Ulitsa 1/7, St. Petersburg, Russia
View rooms Address: Nevsky prospect, Mikhailovskaya Ulitsa 1/7, St. Petersburg, Russia
Rates from:
RUB 10266
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Come for
- A sense a literary history - Pushkin and Dostoevsky are among past guests
- Old-school glamour
- Vodka and caviar in abundance
Not suitable for
- Shallow pockets
Eating in
A choice of five restaurants, two cafes and a bar, so there's a good chance of finding what you fancy! L'Europa Restarant is recognised as the best in St Petersburg, with prices to match.
