Bolshaya Morskaya ulitsa
Tel. 313 5757
Bus: 3, 10, 22, 27,
K-169, K-190, K-252, K-289
Tram: 5, 22
Astoria (since March 1916 - "Petrograd Military Hotel"; since
September 1918 - "The First House of the Petrograd Council"; since 1924
- "The First House of the Leningrad Council"; since February 1991 -
"Astoria") - five-star hotel in St. Petersburg, located in the city
center on St. Isaac's Square next to St. Isaac's Cathedral. It is
located in a historic building - an architectural monument of federal
significance.
The name "Astoria" is also worn by hotels in
different cities of the world: Vienna, Budapest, Ufa, etc.
Until the end of the XIX century. on the site of the future "Astoria" was a four-story profitable house of Prince A. Lvov. At the beginning of the XX century. The plot with the house was acquired by the English joint-stock company Palace Hotel with the intention of building a hotel with expensive rooms here. On February 21, 1901, the Rossiya Insurance Company bought the land, the amount was 1 million 300 thousand rubles. Until 1907, the house served as a hotel, some apartments continued to be rented out. In 1907, the London joint-stock company Palace Hotel became the new owner, and the following year the tenement house was dismantled. A new hotel in its place was supposed to be built by the end of 1909, but construction was completed only in 1911-1912. The author of the project was the famous St. Petersburg architect F. I. Lidval, with the help of engineer N. P. Kozlov, engineer-architect K. G. Eilers and graduates of the first Women's Polytechnic Institute in Russia.
The project of the hotel met all the innovative trends
in the architecture of its time, and the decoration had to correspond to
the highest class of comfort. Structurally, the building is a reinforced
concrete frame on a single base, connected floor by floor with beams and
slabs, with cinder-block or chain-link partitions, due to which it is
completely fire resistant. The construction was carried out with the
participation of the Weiss and Freigart company.
To increase the
capacity (and thereby profitability) of the hotel, the Astoria was built
six stories high, vastly outnumbering neighboring buildings. The facades
are designed in the neoclassical style with modern elements. In order
not to dissonate with the surrounding buildings, the facades are
visually divided into three tiers: the two lower floors, lined with
granite, look like the base of the hotel, the middle floors are
plastered to look like stone and united by wide fluted pilasters. The
upper floor, separated by a cornice, is decorated with decorative vases.
At the same time, a powerful cornice above the fifth floor visually
reduces the height of the building, and a smoothly cut corner (this was
done at the request of the Academy of Arts so that the new building does
not obscure the view of St. Isaac's Cathedral), glazed arched windows on
the first floor and restrained decorative decoration (oval medallions
with garlands, masks above the windows) add elegance to the monumental
building.
The hotel included 350 rooms, a restaurant, a winter
garden, a banquet hall, three salons, a ladies' salon, 8 offices, a
reading room, its own kitchen and a pastry shop. The interiors were
designed in the Art Nouveau style with elements of classicism, the walls
and floors were lined with marble, the columns were lined with mahogany,
the chandeliers were delivered from the Saxon Wurzen factory. Vladimir
Schuko took part in interior decoration.
Astoria was equipped
with the latest technology - 10 elevators were installed in the
building, central water supply with filters and heating, a dust removal
system were installed, telephones were installed in the rooms. A
translation agency, a hairdresser's, a tailor, and a library worked at
the guests' disposal. The silverware for the restaurant was purchased
from Christofle and the china from Bauscher. The first director of the
hotel was the Parisian Louis Terrier.
The official opening of the hotel took place on
December 23, 1912. The name was given in memory of the fashionable New
York hotels owned by the Astor cousins, one of whom had died on the
Titanic a few months earlier, giving way to women in a lifeboat. The
first director of the hotel was the Frenchman Louis Terrier.
In
1914, the Russian authorities sequestered the hotel, and in 1916 it was
finally closed and converted into a military one.
During the 1917 revolution, the hotel was at the
center of military events, the building was stormed several times. After
the October Revolution, the hotel was nationalized, in September 1918 it
was renamed the "1st House of the Petrograd Council". After the start of
the NEP, Astoria was corporatized, in 1922 it was reopened on a
commercial basis. In 1929, the hotel was transferred to the joint-stock
company Intourist, which remained under the control of this company
until 1996.
During the Great Patriotic War, in 1941, hospital No.
926 was located in Astoria, and then hospital No. 108 was opened, where
residents who remained in the city were treated during the blockade. In
1941-1942, the hospital specialized in representatives of creative
professions who remained in the city - writers, artists, sculptors and
musicians were treated there.
According to the memoirs of Emil
Kio, after the war, artists were settled in the building for some time,
and each family was allocated a plot in the park on St. Isaac's Square
for a garden.
On May 21, 1957, Alexander Vertinsky died in a
hotel from acute heart failure.
In the early 1990s The hotel has been extensively
renovated. The interiors of the building were, if possible, restored to
their original form, as at the beginning of the century.
Since
1997, the hotel has been operated by Rocco Forte Hotels, which owns
five-star hotels and luxury resorts around the world. The hotel has 169
rooms, 86 of which are deluxe rooms, including the two-bedroom
Presidential Suite, 1 Royal Suite with Terrace and the Royal Suite.
In 2012 Astoria Hotel celebrated its 100th anniversary. As part of
the celebration of the centenary, a large-scale renovation of the hotel
was carried out. The historic tea room "Rotonda" was renovated in 2015.
In 2022, the Astoria Hotel turns 110 years old.
On the eve of Valentine's Day in 2007, Forbes magazine
published a ranking of the most romantic hotels in the world. When
compiling it, the level of service, the quality of bed linen, and the
range of services (for example, the ability to order breakfast in bed,
sprinkle the room with rose petals, or organize a romantic dinner for
lovers) were taken into account. The 9th position is occupied by the
only Russian hotel - Astoria in St. Petersburg.
There is a legend
that, preparing to enter Leningrad in 1941 after the assault on
Leningrad, the German command printed invitation cards for a gala
banquet at the Astoria Hotel in advance. For this reason, it was
forbidden to fire at it from long-range guns and bomb from the air.
However, this legend has not been documented in any way.
Astoria's
guests were HG Wells, Alain Delon, Robert Plant, Maya Plisetskaya,
Isadora Duncan, George W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher, Matthew Bellamy,
Rolling Stones, Rammstein, 30 seconds to Mars, Linkin Park, Depeche
Mode, Evanescence.
The artistic design of the hotel's interiors
includes 17 paintings by the Angleterre gallery, united by the theme
"Guardians of the City", and a series of 7 paintings "Petersburg
Carnivals", made to decorate the hotel's casino. The paintings were made
by the artists of the FORUS workshop in 1989.
In "Astoria" one of the
episodes of the film "The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia"
was filmed.
When the Astoria Hotel bought new dishes, the old ones
were handed over to the Lenfilm film studio. Spoons, forks, knives,
antique crystal glasses, silver buckets for champagne, vessels in which
dishes are heated, stands for boiled eggs, etc. All these were stylish,
elegant things, made at one time for the best Russian hotel on a special
order. . Since then, dishes from Astoria have been featured in films
more than once. For example, in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, two
English gentlemen use exactly these cutlery