Prague, Czech Republic
Hotel Josef

Detailed Review

In the very heart of one of the most beautiful medieval cities in Europe, designer Eva Jiricna has managed to create a modern masterpiece. The 109-room Hotel Josef in Prague's old town offers a design concept that elegantly blends the most modern elements with the rich history of its surroundings.

Hotel Josef is located in the city centre of Prague, five minutes walking distance from the Old Town Square, Wenceslas Square, Charles Bridge, Powder Tower, Opera and concert halls. The hotel offers 102 sq. m. courtyard, with recreational value in the middle of two hotel buildings and is surrounded by the stock exchange, ministries, bank headquarters, office centers and restaurants.

Whichever room is chosen, guests will enjoy professional service, friendly staff and high standard of luxury.

Press Quotes

"The glass bathrooms and beautifully-upholstered interiors were designed by Eva Jiricna, who has worked on hotels in London and Paris." The Guardian 07

Independent Reviews

Hotel Josef
By Jenny Pidgeon

The Josef is the only boutique-style modern hotel in Prague, with a great central location near the Old Town Square and Jewish Quarter. Consciously ‘designer’ style is visible everywhere, created by Eve Jiricná who has worked to acclaim in Paris and London, and pleasingly this is never at the expense of comfort. The overall feeling is one of light, air and an interesting use of fabric and colour. You enter into a gleaming white lobby area, with the frosted glass reception desk at the far end. From behind steel doors with porthole windows emerge the friendly, professional staff. To the right is a seating area of comfortable white leather bound seats and, to the left, a long glass bar with futuristic bar stools and immaculately laid out bottles providing splashes of colour. In the middle of all this is the main architectural feature of the space; the curling black tip of a glass spiral staircase which winds up from below. The 110 guestrooms are split between the pink building and the orange building, which differ only in the dashes of colour you will find on entering your room. Stylish appointments in white and neutral tones are offset by a bright orange chair or funky pink bedspread. Lighting is minimal and modern, and you will find internet access, DVD-CD players, a DVD library and minibar. The stone-clad bathrooms are partitioned by green glass, with large rainfall showers and separate toilets. The Josef makes much of the 102 metres square of grass between the two buildings, calling it a ‘garden with recreational value’. Whether it lives up to this claim is debatable, but it cheers up the large canteen-style breakfast room with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the patch of green. The hotel has 3 conference rooms and a business room with internet access and a printer for all guests. There is also a ‘fitness area’ (they wisely stop short of calling a few exercise machines a ‘health centre’) and an adjacent terrace on the 6th floor roof. The Josef is good value and it fits its designer shoes with style.

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• Hotel Josef
  By Angela Moore

  Hotel Josef is the elder sibling of the Maximilian. It was designed and purpose built by the same architect, Czech-born Eva Jiricna. She wanted to build somewhere that would be a refuge from the endless flood of Prague’s decorative, baroque beauty and this soothing, luminous hotel is the result.
  
  The lobby, with its creamy white walls and faintly green-lit glass, encompasses a long bar counter, concierge desk and a couple of clusters of white leather chairs around glass tables. One of Jiricna’s signature glass and steel staircases spirals downwards. Though good-looking, and a good place to come for a pre-dinner drink, it’s not anywhere you would want to linger (unless perhaps you have a strong belief in your own decorative worth.)
  
  The lobby leads through to a small, grassy courtyard, where you can have breakfast or sit with a drink. This, and the glass-walled breakfast room beyond, are a more cheerily comfortable take on the lobby. Location-wise, this is excellent, on the edge of the Josev (the old Jewish quarter, one of the most magical bits of Old Town Prague).
  
  The rooms By Prague’s standards, rooms at the Josef are relatively compact. Jiricna went all-out with the glass to compensate and make rooms seem larger (fitting in a city known for its glass!) As a result, rooms have glass walls or huge windows and glass fixtures and fittings; there are soothing neutral colours enlivened with splashes of fuschia and tangerine.
  
  Room categories from superiors upwards also have glass bathrooms; while this can be an appalling concept these are extremely well-executed and discreet. A large glass box with limestone-tiled floors contains wash basins and towel racks and so forth; green opaque glass walls shield the loos and showers which lead off this.
  
  Rooms 801 and 704 are special rooms, suite-sized and with tiny balconies and great views. Both have tubs as well as showers and in 704 there are views of Prague Castle from the bath.
  
  Amenities are good throughout: extremely comfortable beds, TVs and DVD players, robes and slippers and lots of White Company goodies in the bathrooms. No proper closet space will irritate some people but the expensive designer furnishings and clever modular fixtures will make up for that.

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• “Eva Jiricna’s sleek design hotel is a minimalist haven away from the flamboyant architecture usually associated with Prague.”

  Our pick of the design hotels in Prague. This is a design hotel in the most rigorous sense of the word – it was built from scratch by Czech architect Eva Jiricna and every fixture and fitting exists to enhance her vision. It’s also very comfortable, very user-friendly.