Detailed Review
In the very heart of Prague’s romantic Old Town, behind a spectacular Art-Deco facade, a superior class K+K Hotel, after reconstruction and comprehensive refurbishment of the traditional former Hotel Central just across from Powder Tower. K+K Hotels has comprehensively renovated this historical “art nouveau” building and opened a superior first class hotel in Spring 2004. 127 guest rooms on 7 floors, including 126 superior rooms, 1 junior suite, business centre, conference facilities.
Press Quotes
"An Art Nouveau landmark that has just emerged from its cocoon after three decades of neglect and a $20 million restoration is the former Hotel Central, now the K + K Hotel Central. Looking as it did in the year 1900, the hotel's pistachio-green facade adorned with soaring gingko tree reliefs and mosaics trimmed with gold attracts many a passing shutterbug.
Inside, the original Art Nouveau features - including elaborate wrought-iron balustrades and stained-glass windows - are combined with ultramodern design to great effect. A highlight is the two-story chrome-and-glass breakfast room built into the hotel's former interwar cabaret theater. The 127 rooms feature all the conveniences of a four-star establishment, including free Internet access, flat-screen TV's, free movies, a minibar and a coffee makers. Fifteen rooms have kept their original Art Nouveau detailing, like molded ceilings. All are street-side with soundproof windows." New York Times 04
Independent Reviews
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"High designer style, rather jarring in a beautiful Art Nouveau theatre"
K+K Hotel
By Angela Moore
This is a new design hotel in a fabulous old art nouveau building, a former theatre. Stand outside it and squint and you could be in turn-of-the-century Paris. Inside, though, things are much more contemporary. The interiors have been ripped out and replaced with a mixture of dramatic designer-y features and repro Art Deco. This sometimes works but it’s sometimes just clunky and wasteful. For an example, see the hotel’s piece de resistance, the former theatre hall, which is now filled with a great big glass cube encasing a conference room and with a restaurant perched on top! A pity, as if this had been left alone it would have been a dramatic space for a bar or restaurant.
The location is decent though not perfect; you’re near the Powder Tower, a fair walk through Wenceslas Square from the action around the Old Town square. It is, though, quiet at night. Though the design of the public spaces is jarring, it does have lots of separate places for people to gather (including a tiny ‘library’ in one of the former theatre boxes.) There are a series of smart seating areas. One is gathered around a plasma tv, set into a red Perspex wall, showing a recording of a flickering gas fire. Lots of effort has gone into reproducing the fittings and furnishings, including a marvelous birdcage lift. Facilities include a little computer corner with a free printer and a gym and a sauna.
The rooms
The 127 rooms are divided between two sections of the hotel; rooms in the older section of the hotel are choice, as these have very high ceilings, charmingly stuccoed. Décor-wise, they are not particularly exciting; colours are rather jazzy greens and purples and there are decent photo prints on the walls. Everything is clean, modern and comfortable. Smallish bathrooms have underfloor heating, which is a wonderful advantage, and many have separate tubs and showers. All in all, a solid option, if not a particularly exciting one.
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