National Hotel building. Kirill Irtyuga, General Director of RosinvestHotel Management Company and VOYAGE Hotels&Resorts

Hotel National is one of the oldest operating hotels in Moscow. Located in the very center of Moscow - on the corner of Tverskaya and Mokhovaya streets, next to Red Square, the Kremlin, and the Alexander Garden - it has long become an integral part of the capital's landscape, and its history is closely connected with the history of Moscow itself, and the whole of Russia.

Construction of the National Hotel began in 1900. The project of the hotel building, commissioned by the Varvara Society of Home Owners, was developed by the then famous architect Alexander Ivanov. During the construction of the building, the most modern technologies and building materials were used - reinforced concrete structures, waterproofing. The majestic facades of the hotel were decorated with natural stone, ceramic tiles, stucco, and the corner attic was decorated with majolica panels. The interior decoration of the National was amazing - marble stairs in the lobby, stained glass windows, mosaic floors, figures of Atlanteans installed at the entrance to the elevators.

The hotel rooms were no less luxuriously decorated and furnished. The furniture for them was made to special order, from mahogany, light and stained oak, and other valuable species. The most expensive apartments of the National, such as the Louis XV Living Room or the Louis XVI Living Room, were located on the third floor and were intended for receiving high-ranking guests. The luxury of the setting was complemented by an exclusive range of amenities and hotel services. Many hotel rooms were equipped with bathrooms and water closets, and all rooms had safes. The National building was heated by the most modern heating system developed at the San Galli foundry. The hotel was fully equipped with telephones, which was also a sign of luxury at that time.

In addition to the rooms, the National building housed a reading room, a restaurant and various hotel services, as well as shops, a bakery and a wine warehouse.

The National Hotel opened in 1903 and immediately gained unprecedented popularity, taking pride of place among the best hotels in Moscow. Accommodation at the National was not cheap, but the hotel rooms were never empty. Rich merchants and large industrialists, foreign diplomats settled here; such prominent figures of Russian culture as Fyodor Chaliapin, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Ivan Bunin lived here at different times.

The changes that occurred in Russia after the October Revolution of 1917 also affected the fate of the National Hotel. During the October battles in Moscow, the hotel building served as one of the strongholds of the counter-revolutionary forces and was damaged by artillery shelling. After the final victory of the Bolsheviks, all major hotels in Moscow were nationalized. The National Hotel was turned into the “1st House of Soviets,” that is, a hostel for functionaries and officials of the new government. In March 1918, after the capital was moved to Moscow, members of the Soviet government settled in the luxurious rooms of the National. Dzerzhinsky, Sverdlov, Trotsky lived here, and Lenin and Krupskaya lived in room 107 for a short time. The room was furnished with upholstered furniture in green tones, on a massive desk covered with green cloth, there were black marble inkwells with paperweights, two bronze candlesticks and a bronze lamp with a green lampshade. The room was illuminated by a bronze three-armed chandelier. Some details of this situation have survived to this day.

After the Soviet government moved to the Kremlin, the National Hotel remained for a long time a hostel for the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. The consequences of this became clear in the early 1930s, when it was decided to return the hotel to its former functions. During the inventory, it turned out that most of the hotel interiors and furniture had fallen into disrepair, and engineering and technical communications were significantly worn out. The National building underwent a major overhaul. The appearance of the hotel changed: the lower floors, lined with granite, sandstone and red brick, were repainted to resemble granite, the oak frames were replaced with aluminum frames, and instead of majolica panels, an industrial landscape in the spirit of the times appeared on the corner attic of the building. The furniture for the National's rooms was taken from the reserve fund created during the nationalization of noble estates. This is how furniture and art objects from the Anichkov and Tsarskoye Selo palaces appeared in the hotel environment. “National” turned into a kind of “museum”, which immediately affected the cost of living in the hotel - even foreign tourists could not afford to stay in its rooms. In subsequent years, the National acquired a reputation as an unprofitable hotel. Several times - both in the 1950s and 1960s - attempts were made to modernize and re-equip the hotel building, but they were not very extensive - repair of roofs and electrical wiring, restoration of individual antique furnishings, internal reconstruction of the building. True, in 1974, the National Hotel was included in the list of historical and cultural monuments protected by the state - but not because its building was an architectural monument in the Art Nouveau style, but because Lenin once lived here. The dilapidation of the building and the lack of modern equipment practically deprived National of its former popularity.

Serious changes in the fate of the hotel began only in 1985, when the decision was finally made to completely restore the National. Some of the antique furniture, recognized as a national treasure, was transferred to museums for storage, the rest was taken out for restoration, and then used in the design of the hotel’s interiors. Based on the results of a competition held in 1990, the general contractor was selected - the Austrian company Rogner. On the Russian side, specialists from the Moscow department for the design of public buildings and structures, Mosproekt-2, took part in the restoration of the National.

Work to revive the National Hotel was carried out in three main directions - repair and redevelopment of the building, modernization of hotel equipment, renovation of interiors. Another floor was added to the northern façade of the building to house a health center, the attic was turned into an attic with twenty additional rooms, and the former courtyard was covered with a glass roof and a café with a winter garden was installed there. At the same time, Austrian designers developed furniture in the Art Nouveau style for National and designed interiors. New chandeliers were made, repeating to the smallest detail the design of the first, pre-revolutionary National lamps.

The revived National welcomed its first guests in 1995. In the same year, by decree of the President of the Russian Federation, the hotel building was classified as a historical and cultural monument of the city of Moscow of federal significance. Thus began a new stage in the history of National. From the very opening, the hotel was awarded the highest category - five stars. In the new look of the National, modern hotel equipment was combined with a carefully restored atmosphere of antiquity. Many rooms retained the interiors of the early 20th century and were furnished with antique furniture; engravings and prints with views of old Moscow and paintings written in the spirit of Russian realism appeared on the walls of the hotel. The new National quickly gained popularity among guests of the capital, acquiring a reputation as a prestigious and exclusive hotel. By 2000, when the oldest hotel in Moscow solemnly celebrated its centenary, it could already be said that the project to revive the National was an undoubted success.

The mourning date in the more than century-long history of the National Hotel was December 9, 2003. On this day, a terrorist attack was committed near the hotel. In the explosion of a Mercedes parked at the entrance to the hotel, six people were killed, including both Chechen suicide bombers, and twelve more people were injured of varying severity. The blast wave broke several windows on the first and second floors of the hotel. In June 2005, a memorial sign dedicated to the victims of the terrorist attack was unveiled at the National Hotel. A spark is carved on a black marble cube and the names of the victims are written. The inscription on the monument reads: “Eternal memory to the victims of the terrorist attack on December 9, 2003.”

Nowadays, the National Hotel has firmly taken its place of honor among the best five-star hotels in the world. National's achievements have been repeatedly awarded an honorary diploma and a Diamond Star from the US Academy of Hospitality - the most prestigious award in the global hotel business. “National” is part of the group of the most fashionable hotels of the European hotel chain “Le Meridien” - “A Royal Meridien Hotels”, but at the same time remains a 100% municipal hotel and is served exclusively by Russian staff. The general director of the hotel, Yuri Podkopaev, who has led the National since 1985, has twice been awarded the title of one of the best hoteliers in the world.

Guide to Architectural Styles

But in the 19th century, the Varvara joint-stock company bought the corner plot for new development. At first, several houses appeared here with cheap apartments and shops on the ground floors. But then the idea arose to build a luxury hotel.

At first the hotel was called “National”. Accommodation was not cheap - up to 25 rubles per day, but there was no shortage of clients. All thanks to the excellent finishing and technical equipment: marble staircases, stucco moldings, mosaic floors, stained glass windows, mahogany furniture. The majolica panels on the upper floor were made at the Abramtsevo plant especially for the National. One of the paintings depicted the god Bacchus on a wooden bicycle. The hotel was equipped with technical innovations of that time: elevators worked, and telephones, water closets and baths appeared in the rooms.

In Soviet times, after the capital was moved from Petrograd to Moscow, members of the Bolshevik government lived here for some time. The National Hotel turned into the First House of Soviets.

How to read facades: a cheat sheet on architectural elements

The hotel functions of the building were returned to the 1930s. The hotel was renovated, and the interiors were replenished with furniture from the Anichkov and Tsarskoye Selo palaces. At the same time, an “industrial” panel by I.I. appeared in the corner part of the building. Rerberg. And during the Second World War, the residences of 16 foreign embassies and diplomatic missions were set up in the National.

The renovated National Hotel opened on May 9, 1995, when Russia celebrated the 50th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. Today the hotel has 202 rooms, and each is a small museum. Antique vases from the time of Napoleon, gilded chandeliers, furniture sets made of Karelian birch send guests back to the times of Tsarist Moscow. In total, on the seven floors of the National there are 500 original antiques.

Category of historical and cultural significance

Federal significance

Object type

Monument

Basic typology

Monument of urban planning and architecture

Creation date information

Facility address (location)

Moscow, st. Mokhovaya, 15/1, building 1 (part)

Name, date and number of the decision of the government authority to place the object under state protection

Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR On the addition and partial amendment of the Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR dated August 30, 1960 No. 1327 “On further improvement of the protection of cultural monuments in the RSFSR” No. 624 dated 12/04/1974

Description of the subject of protection

Urban planning characteristics of the building involved in the formation of the development front of Tverskaya and Mokhovaya streets, Manezhnaya Square; volumetric-spatial composition of the main building as amended in 1901-1903; composition and architectural and artistic design of the facades of the main building as amended in 1901-1903; four small polychrome majolica panels 1901-1903. on the 6th floor level; majolica panel with an industrial theme from the 1920s. at the 7th floor level; composition and architectural and artistic design of the facades of the courtyard of the main building in the original edition of 1901-1903; composition and architectural and artistic design of a fragment of the southwestern firewall, decorated in 1934 according to the design of academician I.V. Zholtovsky in connection with the construction of the “House on Mokhovaya” on the neighboring site; the original function of the hotel. Space-planning structure and structures of the main walls of the main and courtyard buildings, 1901 - 1903. (basement - 7 floors); system of vaulted basement floors (the subject of protection of vaulted basement floors is specified based on the results of the design of the device). Initial architectural and artistic design and decoration of the interiors of the main building: window rollers and marble window sills; volumetric-spatial composition and decorative design of the main lobby of 1901-1903: stucco ceilings, a fragment of the floor made from the original Metlakh tiles; volumetric-spatial composition, decorative design and construction of the main staircase and elevator hall from Mokhovaya Street, 1901-1903. (1-6 floors): enclosing structures, stucco decoration of ceilings and walls, stained glass filling of window openings, fragment of the staircase floor (6th floor?), assembled from the original tiles, figures of Atlanteans, metal fencing of elevators n. XX century; volumetric-spatial composition and decorative design of the staircase from the side of Tverskaya Street of the former “Petukhov Brothers Ready-Made Dress and Fur Products Store”: figured enclosing structures; location and volumetric-spatial design of the service staircases of the main building (basement - 7 floors) and the courtyard building (basement - 5 floors); location and decorative design of corridors and halls of the 2-6 floors of the main building; premises of the modern hall "St. Petersburg": decorative design and painting of ceilings, original mirror and heating radiators (2nd floor, south-eastern corner of the main building); premises of modern banquet halls "Suzdal" and "Kostroma": ceiling painting 1975-1976. , made by artists I.V. Nikolaev and M.M. Dedova-Dzedushinskaya (2nd floor, northern corner of the main building); the original structure of the rooms located along the main facades (3-6 floors); hotel room 178 (3rd floor): original planning solution, decorative ceilings, stained glass; hotel room 101 (3rd floor): stucco ceiling decoration with paintings, corner fireplace; hotel room 107 (3rd floor): in 1918 V.I. stayed in the room. Lenin and N.K. Krupskaya; hotel room 115 (3rd floor): artistic ceiling painting "Triumph of Juno" 1902, stucco ceiling decor; hotel room 207 (4th floor): fragment of the picturesque composition painting “Bacchus on a wooden bicycle”, stucco ceiling decoration; hotel room 201 (4th floor): painted frieze with fantasy masks in gilded vignettes on a blue background. The commission proposes to clarify the name of the object in the following wording: “Hotel “National”, 1901-1903, architect A.V. Ivanov.” 2. The subject of protection for a cultural heritage site of federal significance is approved in the prescribed manner.

Friday, February 5, 2016

Shortly before the New Year, we were lucky enough to photograph one of the oldest and most luxurious hotels in the city - the National.

The National Hotel was built in 1902-03 according to the design of the architect Alexander Ivanov; the Varvara joint-stock company acted as a customer and sponsor. At the time of opening, it was the most expensive, prestigious, modern and technically equipped hotel.

In this publication we will walk through the halls and rooms of the hotel, and also briefly talk about its history —>

At all times, appropriate guests stayed at the hotel - government officials, important foreign gentlemen and celebrities. Endless governors-general, leaders of noble assemblies. But the most famous guest of the hotel’s first years was not an official at all, but a composer - Rimsky-Korsakov.

After the revolution, the hotel turned into the 1st House of Soviets, in fact a hostel for Soviet officials. In the 1920s alone, most of the furniture and the former splendor of the interiors were lost. Since the 1930s, it has been a hotel again, now under the familiar name “National”; hundreds of pieces of antique furniture, requisitioned from rich palaces of the tsarist era, have been brought into its rooms. But large-scale repairs and restoration were carried out only in the early 1990s. During the restoration, all rooms of the hotel were brought as close as possible to their original appearance. Let's walk through the hotel and see what's inside, what has changed over 113 years, and who had the honor of living in its rooms.

Decoration of elevators in the main lobby of the hotel. An elevator for 1902 was an unprecedented luxury and innovation; the very first electric elevators in Moscow appeared a year earlier, in 1901.

It cannot be said that the National Hotel is a building in the Art Nouveau style. After all, this is eclecticism, the architect Alexander Ivanov, who built it, remained faithful to the mixture of styles even in the Art Nouveau era, he is an architect of the St. Petersburg school, he lived in the northern capital and built more than 60 houses there, starting in the 1870s, and only in 1890s came to Moscow. Even in the heyday of Art Nouveau, he used only details of the newfangled style in his projects. The National Hotel is close to classicism in its composition, and in its decor it is a bright mixture of classicism, baroque, French renaissance and modernism. Most of the modernity is in the forged grilles of the balconies, the mosaic panel at the top of the corner part of the building, and in the interior it is primarily the fences of the main staircases.

There were two main staircases: the main one was from Mokhovaya Street. The Art Nouveau staircase railing, referencing Franco-Belgian Art Nouveau, is the pride of the National and one of the main symbols of the hotel.

We look from the stairs towards the entrance. The composition of the hall is reminiscent of St. Petersburg neoclassicism; many of St. Petersburg's front doors are decorated in a similar way, with atlases. The architect's roots make themselves felt. By the way, the wooden vestibule at the entrance is partially original.

Looking up at the staircases decorated for the New Year.

In the 1990s, it took a long time to come up with a hotel brand logo. And suddenly they discovered a miraculously preserved wine glass with the hotel’s monogram made from a combination of the Russian letter and H and the Latin N. The logo was ready, there was no need to come up with anything new. As a result, the monogram of the early 20th century formed the basis of the hotel’s new corporate identity; it is now everywhere – on staff costumes, in advertising brochures, and on all signs.

A new café space on the ground floor emerged in the 1990s. Before reconstruction, it was a courtyard-well, surrounded on all sides by hotel buildings.

The floral decoration of the main staircase is also quite a characteristic detail of the Art Nouveau era, but in composition it is still closer to classicism.

Another reason for joy is the preserved stained glass windows from 1902 in the Art Nouveau style that decorate the windows of the main staircase. All of them are original; only the central part of the windows was lost during Soviet times. In St. Petersburg, quite a lot of these are still preserved in the front apartment buildings; for Moscow, this, alas, is very rare.

One of the restaurant halls on the second floor of the hotel. Almost all the decoration here was lost during Soviet times; in the 1930s it was an ordinary dining room. Based on the surviving traces, everything was restored during the restoration process, including the color scheme of the walls and ceilings.

A local artifact - authentic heating radiators from the early 20th century.

The view that now opens from the restaurant from the second floor was not originally there. Until the 1930s, a whole block of old buildings stood on the site of Manezhnaya Square, including the five-story buildings of the Loskutnaya Hotel. It was she who blocked the view of the Kremlin from the National.

View of their upper floors of the "National" at the beginning of the 20th century. Between the houses there is narrow Tverskaya, and in the distance behind the roofs you can see the tops of the Historical Museum and the sharp roof of the City Duma (the former Lenin Museum, now another building of the Historical Museum).

Before the revolution, the kitchen was located on the sixth floor so that the smells of food did not spread throughout the hotel, and dishes were transported to the restaurant on the second floor using a special lift - a “machine for lowering food.”

In the window on the right you can see the newly built Moscow Hotel. It is believed that the artist Andrei Ioganson sketched the view of the hotel while sitting in one of the restaurant halls on the ground floor of the hotel, later turning the drawing into a label for Stolichnaya vodka.

The hall on the second floor with windows towards Tverskaya is a monument to the Soviet era, the times of “developed socialism”, 1975-76. The authors of the stucco moldings and paintings are artists I.V. Nikolaev and M.M. Dedova-Dzedushinskaya.

The design clearly refers to the era of the Stalinist Empire style, but here it is all deliberately made naive and childish. And not just like that, here in the 1970s there was an idea to set up a children's cafe.

A fragment called “Carnival”, author – Marina Dedova-Dzedushinskaya.

The adjacent corner room, decorated by the same artists, was occupied by the Petukhov brothers' fur and sewing accessories store before the revolution. A separate staircase led to the store from the first floor, from Tverskaya. Now this is the second front door of the National.

The halls and rooms of the National contain a huge amount of antiques. However, now it is difficult to say where each of the artifacts came from, this knight, for example. In the 1930s, thousands of units were requisitioned from pre-revolutionary manor houses, estates of nobles and merchants. All this was distributed among Soviet hotels and institutions.

Second floor corridors.

The doors, their decoration and the ornament with the number on the glass have been completely restored exactly as they were in 1903.

Some of the celebrities who have stayed at the National at various times are Catherine Deneuve, ballerina Anna Pavlova, footballer Pele, racing driver David Coulhardt and Alain Dalon. The entire wall in one of the corridors is covered with portraits.

After the revolution, in March 1918, the Soviet government moved from Petrograd to Moscow. On the first train were Lenin, Krupskaya, Maria Ulyanova and Bonch-Bruevich and his wife. They were accommodated in rooms at the National Hotel. Party leaders from the second train were assigned to Metropol. Before the arrival of the party leadership in Moscow, all the guests were evicted from the hotel and security was posted. Room 107, where Lenin and Krupskaya were lodged, was guarded by Latvian riflemen from Smolny.

This is the office and bedroom of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. The furniture in the room is antique, but not from the National, but, again, from palaces and estates, imported in the 1930s. Moreover, in this issue some of the items are from the royal palaces of St. Petersburg. The round table has the stamp of the Tsarskoye Selo Palace Administration, and the desk with drawers has the stamp of the Anichkov Palace. Alas, the original furniture from the “National” did not survive the 1920s; a significant part of it was also used as firewood for heating.

Krupskaya and Lenin’s sister Maria Ulyanova slept in this room.

Neoclassical ornament restored during reconstruction in the 1990s, restored from traces discovered under several layers of Soviet wallpaper. Similar ornamental belts decorated all the hotel rooms, only their design was different in each room.

Each room has a different ornament.

In addition to the leader of the proletariat, the following people managed to live in the former “National” in those days: Sverdlov, Trotsky, Lunacharsky, Tsyurupa, Budyonny, Voroshilov and Stalin. On March 19, 1918, a week after their arrival, all party leaders, along with Lenin, were moved to the Kremlin, which was quickly cleaned and patched up after the revolutionary battles.

The bathroom in room 107 is now new. The original bathrooms were small and uncomfortable by today's standards, but at the beginning of the 20th century they were an unprecedented luxury. With all these amenities, “National” beat the rest of the leading hotels at that time. Loskutnaya, Bolshaya Moskovskaya, Paris, Louvre Madrid, Dresden - all of them were built before sewerage was installed in Moscow, and in most cases did not have plumbing equipment and bathrooms. Yes, and “National” only 13 of the most expensive rooms had water closets and bathrooms. The remaining guests used the 49 bathrooms on the floors.

Third floor corridor.

After the government moved to the Kremlin, “National” was renamed the 1st House of Soviets. All shops on the 1st and 2nd floors were closed, the restaurant turned into a canteen. The delegates to the congresses of the Soviets, who had arrived, it seemed, for a while, did not want to leave here. Members of the Communist Party of Finland, employees of the State Control apparatus, members of the Small Council of People's Commissars, the list of their positions could go on for a long time, but the names hardly mean anything to anyone in our time: Frumkin, Minkin, Galkin, Karamyasov, Roslavets and etc. Among famous people, we can remember Molotov and Kaganovich. Gradually, the hotel rooms became overcrowded, lower-ranking party officials invited their relatives and friends, everyone wanted to stay here, and as a result, the hotel turned into complete chaos and disorder.

This is what commission member G.P. wrote in the report after the inspection. Maurin: “Inspecting the 1st House of Soviets of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, its warehouses with food, pantries with equipment and the kitchen where lunch is prepared, I found and was truly amazed at all the mismanagement of the people assigned to this institution. The kitchen where the food is prepared is, if you enter from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., a complete swamp or garbage pit. The floor is littered with food waste, such as potato peelings and cabbage leaves, and all this is sufficiently saturated with dirt.
... carcasses of meat and fish lie in the open courtyard under a canopy, exposed to weathering and spoilage. The same fate befalls potatoes, of which 1,000 poods in bags are collected in a common pile and represent a dump of spoiled products.”

And only in the 1930s did everything change, all the Bolsheviks were evicted, and the 1st House of Soviets again turned into the National Hotel.

Let's return to inspecting the best hotel rooms.

This is room 115, which before the revolution bore the name “Louis XV’s Drawing Room”. Furniture made from Karelian birch, brought here in the 1930s, was manufactured at the beginning of the 20th century at the famous factory of P.N. Schmidt. Initially, this room, like all the rooms on the third and fourth floors, had mahogany furniture from the Meltzer factory, a trendsetter in furniture fashion in St. Petersburg and supplier to the Imperial Court. On the fifth and sixth floors there was furniture made of light and stained oak. The original decoration of the walls with damask, a fabric of pink tones, has been restored. During the restoration it turned out that the upper cornice was also a wooden structure for fastening silk damask.

The most significant relic from issue 115 is an early 19th century French vase with images of Napoleon and his wife Josephine. Josephine looks into the corner, and once every two weeks the vase is turned 180 degrees so that everything is fair. During the era of “perestroika,” when property was removed from the hotel, the legendary vase disappeared. The criminal investigation department threw all its efforts into searching for her, and soon the stoker of one of the Moscow boiler houses called the police. It turned out that his friend, a former hotel employee, was hiding this vase in his boiler room. The thief was caught and the vase was returned to its place.

Now this room belongs to the Presidential Suite class. Before the revolution, members of royal families, foreign diplomats, and ministers of the tsarist government stayed in such rooms. In 1913, the uncle of Nicholas II, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, father-in-law of Felix Yusupov, lived here. And in 1918, it was in this room that Yakov Sverdlov, the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, one of the people who made the decision to execute the royal family, was accommodated.

Grand piano from the 19th century by the German company Rud Ibach Sohn.

The picturesque panel “The Triumph of Juno” has been preserved since 1902 and was restored in the 1990s.

And in the bedroom the furniture is already modern, stylized as antique.

During the Stalinist repressions, many numbers were bugged. One day, writer Mikhail Sholokhov became an accidental victim of wiretapping. Usually, when he came to Moscow, he stayed at the National. In 1938, the writer’s affair with the wife of the “Iron People’s Commissar” Nikolai Yezhov broke out. Evgenia Yezhova visited the author of “Quiet Don” in the rooms of this hotel. And the most interesting thing is that the wiretap recording went straight to People's Commissar Yezhov through the security officers.

Another room worthy of attention is 177. The furniture is also all antique, brought from rich estates.

Contrast.

It is worth taking a closer look at the details of the bed.

Its backs are decorated with rams' heads.

There is a bed with rams, and a wardrobe with swans in the capitals.

On top is a belt of restored fragments of Art Nouveau decor. The dark rectangle is a cleared original painting, and all the others were restored from it. The original fragment has darkened over time; initially it was like all the others now - lighter.

Original and restored fragments.

Table in the living room.

In the living room, the decor is represented by suits of playing cards. And here, too, they preserved the original, darkened fragment.

Fourth floor corridor.

In 2007, French President Nicolas Sarkozy stayed in this room.

The painting “Bacchus on a wooden bicycle” belongs to the original decoration of the hotel, recently restored.

Furniture details for room 210.

This is a three-room suite, on either side of the main corner room there are two more, with windows onto Mokhovaya and Tverskaya. In the 1920s, the family of Comrade Kropotkin lived in a corner room and there were 10 beds.

A room with a window onto Mokhovaya. Another family was already living in this room. In fact, every room in the 1920s was a communal apartment.

And this one faces Tverskaya. During the time of the 1st House of Soviets, guards or subordinates of big bosses could live in such small rooms.

During the restoration of the National in the 1990s, 120 rooms were restored from the 3rd to 6th floors, they were brought as much as possible to their original appearance.

The topmost stained glass window is different from all the others.

Its fragment.

Sixth floor corridors and rich floral stucco.

A mixture of Rococo and Art Nouveau.

And finally, a shot from the reception hall, on the first floor.

Worked on the publication:
text: Alexander Ivanov
photo: Alexander Usoltsev

Of course, I didn’t stay at the National Hotel, but I had a chance to visit the National Restaurant, which is attached to the hotel, once, oddly enough, during my student years, in the early seventies. I remember the hall where the young man and I had dinner seemed too prim and the dinner too formal and boring. I felt uncomfortable there. But at that moment I was just interested in visiting the famous restaurant. I didn't want to go there anymore.
I am writing this to explain why my article about “National” did not fall into the category of advice related to the topics: “where to live” and “where to eat.”
I will write about the National Hotel as a place of artistic and historical value. Information taken from the hotel website.
The National Hotel in Moscow was built in 1903 according to the design of the architect Alexander Ivanov. The luxurious hotel building is created in an eclectic style with modern elements. The hotel is more like a museum. It is decorated with natural stone and stucco, marble and stained glass windows. Mosaic floor. Already at that time the hotel was equipped with elevators, a ventilation system, and telephone communications.
The original name of the hotel was “National”. According to the creators, the hotel was intended to receive and serve high-ranking foreign guests and representatives of the Russian state and military elite.
In 1903, the National had one hundred and sixty rooms, among which the most expensive and luxuriously decorated were the apartments on the third floor of the hotel: room 101, until 1917 called the “Louis XVI Drawing Room” and room 115, called the “Louis XV Drawing Room”.
In 1903, the cost of hotel accommodation ranged from 1 ruble 50 kopecks to 25 rubles per day. For comparison, at the beginning of the 20th century, zemstvo teachers and doctors received a salary of 10 - 15 rubles, which was a good income.
Not only ministers, officials and diplomats preferred to stay at the National Hotel. Among the hotel guests there were many artists - the famous Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, the French writer Anatole France, the English writer Herbert Wells. In 1903, one of the most famous guests of the National was the outstanding Russian composer Nikolai Andreevich Rimsky-Korsakov.
The October Revolution of 1917 fatally changed the fate of the National. In 1918, the Soviet government moved from St. Petersburg to Moscow, and while the Government was hastily putting in order the premises in the Kremlin, which had been damaged by artillery shelling during street battles, the National Hotel became a temporary refuge for Lenin, Krupskaya, Dzerzhinsky, Trotsky , Sverdlov and other representatives of the communist elite. Lenin and Krupskaya lived for 7 days in room 107.
After the Soviet government moved to the Kremlin, the hotel began to be called in the spirit of the revolutionary times, in a new way - “National”, the First House of Soviets.
Major renovations of the hotel continued from July 1, 1931 to December 31, 1932. The equipment of the newly opened hotel rooms of the National was carried out from the reserve fund created after the October Revolution as a result of the “disbandment” of estates and palaces. Among the interior decoration items at the National were furniture and works of art, including from the Tsarskoye Selo and Anichkov palaces.
A new large-scale canvas with an area of ​​120 square meters, placed by 1932 on the facade of the newly opened National, depicted an industrial landscape - power towers, factory pipes and tractors - everything that, according to the ideologists of Soviet art of the 1930s, better reflected the spirit of the times than the original antique plot in the spirit of fashion trends of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
From 1991 to 1995, a large-scale reconstruction was carried out at the National. On May 9, 1995, the National Hotel reopened its doors to guests under the Le Meridien brand, one of the largest hotel brands representing five-star hotels around the world.
On September 1, 2009, the National Hotel became the first and only hotel in Russia of The Luxury Collection chain, leaving the Le Meridien brand, also owned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts.
The Luxury Collection has more than 60 hotels around the world. All of them are exclusive hotels with a unique history and architecture, the highest level of service for the most discerning and respectable guests.
Today, among the guests of “National” there are still leaders of states and prominent politicians, public figures and scientists, businessmen and writers, actors and musicians, therefore “National” is still at the center of the social, political and cultural life of the country and the world, receiving heads of state Big Eight, guests of the Moscow International Film Festival, etc.

👁 Do we book the hotel through booking as always? In the world, not only Booking exists (🙈 we pay for a huge percentage of hotels!) I have been practicing Rumguru for a long time, it’s really more profitable 💰💰 than Booking.