Prague Lifestyles Magazine Western Premier Hotel Majestic Plaza

The problem with planning extensive reconstructions in a city as ancient as Prague is that you really don’t know what you’ll unearth when you dig beneath the surface.

The discovery of some silver coins reckoned to have been minted in the medieval silver-mining town of Kutná Hora in the 15th century held up work on the new Best Western Premier Hotel Majestic Plaza by four months, meaning bureaucratic delays added a full year in total to the planned two-year reconstruction.

The reconstruction project was designed by architect Jan Javůrek, while his wife took responsibility for the interior design. It is the fourth Prague hotel in the portfolio of the Korean-owned Le Investments group whose other developments are the Elite, the Meteor Plaza, and the Charles, with another new Plaza in the planning stages.

The Majestic Plaza hotel is an amalgamation of two reconstructed buildings sharing a common courtyard. The larger of the two, facing onto Štěpánská Street, was formerly an office building dating from the 1920s and it now houses the hotel’s Italian-marble-clad lobby and 135 guestrooms decorated in an Art Deco style. The spacious lobby and the Lobby Bar create an elegant, classy first impression with rust-and-cream marble floors and tables, and red-and-cream leather seating.

The smaller adjoining building, which reaches all the way back to Školská Street, was a residential building originally constructed in 1840, and it has now been given a Biedermeier-style revamp. The four floors with 50 rooms offer guests a cozier alternative to the Art Deco theme running through the rest of the hotel. Fans of the Czech author Jaroslav Hašek, who penned the satirical novel The Good Soldier Švejk, will be interested to learn that the writer was born in this very building. That littleknown fact is what that the hotel’s general manager Petra Hubáčková is hoping to promote in the future by having a special menu dedicated to the lovable anti-hero Švejk in the hotel’s Asmera Restaurant.

One very attractive feature for both tourists and corporate guests is the fact that 17 rooms in total have a clear view of Prague Castle and the accompanying skyline. Indeed, the 6th floor of the larger building is known as the Majestic Panorama Club. While many hotels in Prague claim to have a view of the castle, it’s very rare to find one with so many rooms and quite such a panorama.

Regarding the mix of guests, Hubáčková reckons that so far the hotel has received “half and half corporate clients and tourists, and also a lot of conferences because we are directly in the city center so it’s a nice location.” The four-star hotel has been well-equipped to cater for conferences. The airy Majestic Conference Room has a capacity of 80 and is flooded with daylight. And in addition to the Asmera Restaurant in the smaller building, there is the Victoria Restaurant in the larger building, which can provide an extra 150 places in a theatre-style seating arrangement.

While the feel of most of the hotel is very classic, the Havana Club in the basement offers something else entirely. “It’s a really modern Latin-American bar and it’s in a very different style,” says Hubáčková. With space for a DJ and dancing, it is fast becoming a popular night spot that is open to the public at weekends, as well as a hip venue for private parties. Canary yellow leather seating and contemporary lighting give the space a modern, urban feel. The dance floor is surrounded by free-standing lighting features depicting the outlines of dancers in various poses, which create something of a disco atmosphere.