Hotel Alessandria

As part of the innovation of Hradec Králové’s accommodation capacities, which so far included only small, formerly private hotels, such as the Avion Hotel and the Grand Hotel, it was decided to build two large-capacity hotels. A smaller and cheaper hotel was adapted from a former hostel in Silesian Suburbs in 1976. The main designer of the housing estate, Jan Zídka, planned several high-rises along SNP Street. First, there were three thirteen-storey tower blocks of flats, nicknamed Kazi, Teta and Libuše, and then a lower slab hotel was built. All structures were built perpendicular to the avenue, while the older lower continuous residential buildings with amenities were parallel.
 

The former hostel was built in 1965 in close proximity to a small older villa development from before WWI. The suburbs saw another wave of construction of houses and rental villas in the late the 1930s that did not cease until the beginning of the war. The hostel, later a hotel, is thus the urban counterbalance to this small and low-rise urban structure.
 

The hotel is directly connected to the five-storey continuous apartment buildings facing SNP Stret by a two-storey connecting wing. The hotel has a main wing, where the entrance foyer and facilities were planned on the ground floor; the first floor housed a glass restaurant with a café and the second to ninth floors contained hotel rooms. Originally, there were 80 hotel rooms. The single-storey wing with a dining room and a snack bar faced today’s bratří Štefanů Street. The building had a roof terrace. In the urban planning study, this tract was to be followed by another single-storey building for amenities and services, but this was not built.

 

The building was constructed as a reinforced concrete monolithic skeleton with brick block partitions. The exterior originally seemed very light and subtle, the skeleton frames were visible with large windows, black dividing columns and smooth brick surfaces. Architectural historian Jakub Potůček gave a very positive assessment of the hotel’s architecture: “The architect Zídka designed it in the spirit of the so-called late modernism with elements of the subsiding playful Brussels style.”

 

In 2009–2010, the hotel was renovated with new insulation and cladding, not taking into account the original late modernist and subtle style. 
 

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