Bristol Hotel, Warsaw

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This beautiful neo-Renaissance building built in 1899 - 1901for the most luxurious and expensive Hotel Bristol has earned a number of reputable awards and is the only hotel in Poland that is a member of prestigous the Leading Hotels of the World. You may visit its stylish interiors, I liked the Column Bar most.

In Bristol Hotel two Nobel Prizes (1903, 1911) of Maria Curie, Polish chemist living mostly in Paris, were celebrated. From the hotel balcony Jan Kiepura, world famous tenor, used to sing for the crowds. Wojciech Kossak, a famous Polish painter set up his atelier in the hotel and paid with his paintings which decorated the hotel restaurant. Nowadays the hotel combines 19th century ambience and charm with 21st century luxury and technology and accommodates many heads of states, movie/sport stars and other VIPs including fellow VT-ers :-).

The history of the building started with a fraud and scandal. An open architectural competition was hold to choose the best design and it was chosen and prized but finally the design of someone else, the member of the competition jury Wladyslaw Marconi came to the realisation and paradoxically it was a good choice. The Vienna Secession decors of the hotel interiors were designed by famous Austrian architect Otto Wagner but unfortunatelly were not re-stored after damages of WWII.

One of the shareholders in the consortium that built the hotel was the famous pianist and post-World War I Polish prime minister, Ignacy Paderewski. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery in 1941, his ashes were brought to Warsaw and placed in a crypt in St. John's Cathedral (details in the tip Thank you America!).