The Hotel Metropol in Moscow is an historic hotel in the centre of the city. It was built between 1899 and 1905 in the Art Nouveau style. A few years later it was nationalised by the Bolsheviks and was used as offices for Soviet bureaucracy. It was from this building that the fateful telegram was sent ordering the execution of the Tsar and his family. In 1930 it reverted to its original purpose and once again offered accommodation to guests. During WWII it housed British and American war correspondents. The Soviets realised that international guests would report badly on the Soviet Union if housed in dreadful rooms, so they restored the hotel’s silver service and uniformed bellhops to impress such people, while ordinary citizens were facing terrible hardships. It has 365 rooms and each is different in shape and decoration.
It is this hotel which is the setting of Amor Towles’ popular 2016 novel A Gentleman in Moscow, which tells the story of a Russian aristocrat living in a hotel for thirty years. Towles first visited the hotel in 1998 and ogled the restaurant’s glass painted ceiling. When about two thirds of the way through his novel, he went back, stayed for a week and took a full tour of the hotel.
In the 1920s it was a base for Arthur Ransome when he sent media reports from Moscow. He commented on the absence of any room service, so guests had to take pots and pans to the kitchens to get food, or hot water for tea. George Bernard Shaw visited Moscow in 1931, to celebrate his 75th birthday. He and Lady Astor got stuck in the lift between floors and had to be pulled out. Fabian socialists Sydney and Beatrice Webb stayed at the Metropol in 1935 and soon afterwards published a two-volume book praising Stalin and his regime. Soon, during Stalin’s reign of terror, guests at the Metropol were being dragged from their beds, never to be seen again. You can read more about that terrible time in The Red Hotel: Moscow 1941, the Metropol Hotel, and the Untold Story of Stalin’s Propaganda War by Alan Philps (published in 2023).
I have never been to Moscow and now is not the time for a visit, but I do hope one day to be able to visit the Hotel Metropol in Moscow.
Have you ever stayed here? Tell me by leaving a comment here.
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Janette
I have just read my comment and need to add a brief comment
The station names on the Metro were only in Cyrillic’s
And the bees do not bust they visit!’
Janette
Susannah Fullerton
It certainly would not have been easy for anyone without Russian to find their way around!
J Emmerson
Greetings Susannah
I had the pleasure of two weeks in Russia in August, 1973 and one week of this in Moscow, staying at the Metropol!!
I, too, loved Amor Towels’ book and lived it vividly as I read. Every detail was so clearly and accurately presented. I thought the ending rather terse, but a pleasant surprise!.
I breakfasted and had some other meals in the grand dining room (including caviar), slept in a room upstairs with a view over the garden-filled square (the Metropol bees bust here), beside the Bolshoi Theatre and spent considerable time in the foyer, beneath the magnificent ceiling, beside the bubbling fountain – people-watching or waiting for a guide.
Of course I went somewhere every day AND every night. I had seen the Kirov ballet in Leningrad ( a truly beautiful city – St Petersburg now) and wanted to see the Bolshoi in Moscow BUT that week was a season of a visiting company – the Australian Ballet. Oh well.
As indicated in the book, the Metropol is within easy walking distance of Red Square, the Kremlin, St Basil’s Cathedral and Lenin’s tomb
One evening I made a visit to the Moscow Circus st its permanent home in the Moscow hills, travelling on the Metro, with its stunning stations, very deep underground- a hazard for tourists was the name of each station was only written once in the centre of he very long platforms. Visitors were not particularly welcome in ‘73, there were no helpful signs and it was extremely difficult and generally impossible to find helpful maps. Having said all that, although I was travelling alone, I felt perfectly safe but do know I was carefully watched!
My guide took me for a visit to a Pioneers Club, the very organised after school activity programme. At the end, I was resented with an Interpreter’s badge because of my fluency in English!
Obviously I could ramble on and on, but have been jay to have an opportunity to resurrect some memories!
Best wishes.
Janette
Susannah Fullerton
It sounds like an amazing and memorable experience and I am envious you got to stay in the hotel. I really enjoyed the book, except for the ending. I felt it ended very poorly.
What a lot of drama drama and political upheaval that building has seen, and how things have changed in Russia.
Thanks for your comments.
Robin Warner
Hi Susannah
I haven’t stayed in the hotel but feel as if I know it through reading A Gentleman in Moscow. The majority of our book group really enjoyed that book except for our Byelorussian member Lena who said it did not reflect reality. We knew that of course but it was nevertheless a fascinating novel.
I was lucky enough to see St Petersburg in 2014 when it was easier to visit.
Cheers
Robin
Susannah Fullerton
Thanks Robin. I loved the book except for the ending which I felt was very flat. But I would love, some day, to see the hotel.