Hotel Moskva, Belgrade
Hotel Moskva | |
---|---|
Terazije, Belgrade, Serbia | |
Address | Terazije 20 Belgrade 11000 |
Coordinates | 44°48′46.5″N 20°27′37.5″E / 44.812917°N 20.460417°E |
Opening | 14 January 1908 |
Renovated |
|
Owner | Mile Dragić |
Technical details | |
Floor count | 5 |
Design and construction | |
Architect(s) | Jovan Ilkić |
Developer | Karlo Knol |
Other information | |
Number of rooms | 132 |
Number of suites | 6 |
Website | |
www |
Hotel Moskva (
Location
Hotel Moskva is located on the
The entire area of Terazije is abundant in
History
In the late 1890s, during the
By the early 1900s, together with his wife Stana, Tadić completed a simple one-story family house on the plot. At the time, the Terazije plateau around the house was lined with large chestnut trees that provided nice shade over a small open market where market sellers from Zemun, across the Sava river in neighbouring Austria-Hungary, as well as peasants from the Belgrade outskirts came to sell their produce. In essence, the open market was an upper town outpost of the larger Zeleni Venac open market located several hundred meters down nearby Prizrenska Street.
Velika Srbija inn
After Tadić's passing, his wife Stana inherited the property. Known around town as Stana Boškova (Boško's Stana), she immediately sold the property to the
By 1902, the Marjanovićs sold the inn to merchants Mitar Vranković and Nikola Vučković who in 1904 flipped it to Svetozar Vukadinović, former director of the Serbian Shipbuilding Company who had just returned to Serbia following an exile of sorts. Born in 1860 in Novi Sad, Austria-Hungary in a staunchly nationalist Serb household of priest Jevtimije "Jevta" Vukadinović, young Svetozar moved across the border into Serbia where he became an administrator in various shipbuilding companies before being forced into exile due to running afoul of King Milan I Obrenović's pro-Austrian economic policies. During his exile Vukadinović spent time in Russia, as well as in Austria-Hungary just across the border in Novi Sad and Zemun, waiting for the right moment to return to Serbia. That moment eventually came following the June 1903 Obrenović overthrow.
Though he bought the centrally located Velika Srbija, ambitious Vukadinović had no interest in running an inn. Instead, he travelled back to Imperial Russia looking to parlay his newly acquired Belgrade property into a larger business venture. Calling on his Russian connections, Vukadinović managed to get some interest from Roman Ivanovich Poitzl of the Rossiya insurance company about enabling the company to enter the Serbian market via opening a branch in Serbia. They additionally agreed an ambitious project of building a luxurious multipurpose palace in place of Vukadinović's inn that would serve as the branch headquarters.[4]
In 1905 they requested architectural design proposals for a future palace to be submitted to the panel consisting of two architects from Saint Petersburg, famous Vienna architect Otto Wagner, and Belgrade architects Andra Stevanović and Nikola Nestorović.[5] Backed by the Russian architects and Otto Wagner, the design by the Zagreb-based architect Viktor Kovačić (1874–1924) got selected, with the Belgrade-based architect Jovan Ilkić 's (1857-1917) design supported by Stevanović and Nestorović coming in second. Still, the Rossiya's directorate eventually picked Ilkić, bringing him over to Saint Petersburg in order to continue working on the design along with Russian architects. How much of Ilkić's original design was changed in Saint Petersburg is unclear, but according to art historian Draginja Maskareli, the fact that the original construction plans have been signed by Rossiya's chief architect Pawel Karlovich Bergstresser (1851-1920), as well as the fact that Moskva's final facade contains elements of Saint Petersburg secession, it is reasonable to assume that there were changes.[6]
Construction of the Rossiya Palace
The construction began in March 1905. Sheer size of the project attracted many Belgraders who gathered daily around the construction site, watching the excavation and laying of the foundation.[7]
Right away, the project ran into unexpected problems when it was discovered that the soil under the Velika Srbija inn is full of hardened loam as well as underground springs and subterranean streams, creating additional budgetary needs. Eighty-two wooden beams, 5m in length and 30 cm thick, were placed in the palace's foundation followed by 30 wagons of boiling iron in 9-meter long rods, and 10 wagons of hard Ripanj stone. A 2.2m thick concrete panel was then placed over the foundation. The brick-laying had not started until spring 1906. The construction work was performed by the civil engineer Karlo Knol and the bricklayers from Crna Trava while the supervising engineer was the project design architect Ilkić himself. Reinforced concrete part of the job was managed by architect Matija Šnajder. The surface of the outer walls from the second floor to the roof was lined with yellowish tiles decorated with green-coloured ornaments.
The ceramic lining was brought in from the Zsolnay factory in Pécs, Austria-Hungary. The tiled façade starts from the first floor and spans to the roof. The tiles are yellowish, with green embellishments. The casts used to mold these specific tiles is kept in the factory to this day.[8] The upper part of the hotel's façade was laid with a maiolica decorative relief titled 'Glorification of Russia', featuring an image of Roman god Neptune, symbolizing Imperial Russia's yearning for maritime dominance.[9]
Ilkić's design employed a Secessionist style with skillfully incorporated ancient Greek elements, quite daring for that time, giving Belgrade—a city of around 70,000 inhabitants—a modern face during the transformation it was undergoing at the turn of the century.[10] The most impressive feature, even at first glance, is the smooth and shiny façade, made of ceramic tiles.
Upon construction, Hotel Moskva inside the Palace Rossiya had only 36 hotel rooms.[11]
Grand opening
The Rossiya palace (in Serbian: Palata Rosija) was finally opened on Tuesday, 14 January 1908 as the biggest privately owned building in Serbia at the time. Its importance to the country was evidenced in the fact that it was personally opened by King Peter I of Serbia.[12] Another part of the opening ceremony was held three days later on Friday, the 17th of January with the King's Guard, the Royal Serbian Army's most elite unit, staging a concert.
In addition to Hotel Moskva, the palace housed a kafana, an exclusive restaurant serving specialties from the French and Serbian cuisines,[11] numerous apartments for rent, and the Rossiya insurance company's Belgrade branch headed by Svetozar Vukadinović. The insurance company branch consisted of administrative offices on the first floor (one floor above ground) while the teller windows and offices were on the ground floor.[11]
Surrounded by structures of one or two stories, the sheer size of Palata Rosija dominated the skyline of Belgrade, a city of some 70,000 inhabitants at the time. As evidenced by the Russian diplomat
Politika, the Serbian newspaper of record, pronounced Palata Rosija "the most expensive and the most beautiful Russian house in the Balkans".[9]
The palace was also a significant political statement, providing yet another example of King Peter I Karađorđević's and prime minister
Right away, the palace's tenants began moving in — on 31 January 1908, the Russo-Serbian Club settled into its new offices. They were followed by Novo vreme, a newspaper published by Vladislav "Vlajko" Savić, taking its spot at the palace's fourth floor. Later that year, the newly founded Narodna Odbrana housed its Belgrade branch in the Rossiya palace.
In 1909, Rossiya insurance company decided to lease out Hotel Moskva and the kafana inside the Rossiya palace to Mehansko-kafanska zadruga, a local hospitality co-operative headed by Danilo Guteša who put Luka Ćelović in charge of running the hotel's and kafana's day-to-day operations.[15]
Being a Narodna Odbrana member as well as a Novo vreme correspondent, famous Serbian poet Jovan Dučić spent a lot of time at the Rossiya palace. The 18 December 1909 Novo vreme issue wrote of an incident in Hotel Moskva's lobby that saw Dučić punch Rista Odavić , a professor at one of Belgrade's gymnasia. Unsurprisingly, the newspaper's piece was sympathetic to their correspondent, stating that his punch occurred as a consequence of Odavić's repeatedly confrontational and aggressive behaviour.[16]
On 23 February 1910, Serbian Olympic Club (OKS) was founded in the fourth floor offices of Novo vreme at the Rossiya palace with the newspaper's publisher Vlajko Savić and the Serbian Army captain Svetomir Đukić leading the new committee.[17] A memorial plaque at the entrance into the hotel commemorates the event.[18] Similarly, the Journalists' club and the Writers' club both moved into the palace.
Interbellum (Kingdom of Yugoslavia period)
The hotel had a role in the post-World War I Serbian literary scene. Arriving in 1919 to a war-ravaged city that still didn't have a fully restored electrical grid and water supply, novelist Miloš Crnjanski described Belgrade as being "wrecked and ugly—full of holes, ruins, weeds, uncertainty, sensational political events, and returning writers from all corners of the world". Crnjanski proceeded to establish Grupa umetnika, a small but enthusiastic collective of writers, painters, and musicians eager to provide the city with a new beginning in art and culture.[19] They did not form a coherent school or movement, but their meetings, discussions, and polemics over the nature of art provided an engaging and stimulating atmosphere for a younger generation of Modernist writers amidst the Belgrade post-World War I ruins. In addition to Crnjanski, the group that gathered the pre-war and post-war generations featured Sima Pandurović, Rastko Petrović, Stanislav Vinaver, Ivo Andrić, Momčilo Nastasijević, Stanislav Krakov, Branko Lazarević , etc. They met in Hotel Moskva's kafana, because, according to Crnjanski, it was the only place with light.[14]
With the
On 1 October 1923, Poštanska štedionica bank opened its very first counter window at the palace. In 1938 the palace was taken over by the National Bank of Yugoslavia.
In 1937, a submission by Romanian architects won the city-announced competition on the re-arrangement of the entire Belgrade downtown core from the
Leon Trotsky stayed at the hotel while the French linguist and historian Émile Haumant wrote a poem about the hotel, "Moskva, the giant house". The 1938 French film Ultimatum — directed by Robert Wiene and Robert Siodmak, and starring Dita Parlo and Erich von Stroheim — was filmed in the hotel.[21]
World War II: Gestapo HQ
In spring 1941, with Kingdom of Yugoslavia invaded and quickly conquered by Nazi Germany before getting carved up into several Nazi client states, Gestapo moved into Hotel Moskva, transforming it into its headquarters. Not liking its references to Russia, they also renamed it Hotel Velika Srbija, after the original inn.[11]
All throughout
Nationalization: The communist period
The hotel re-opened on 20 October 1945, the first anniversary of the Red Army's liberation of Belgrade from Nazi control.[22] Its name Hotel Moskva was officially reinstated as well. Initially—together with Hotel Mažestik and Hotel Avala—the hotel was handed over to the Putnik tourist agency that began managing its day-to-day operations. With the nationalization of Putnik, Hotel Moskva was also officially nationalized by being placed under the control of the office of Marshal Tito (Maršalat) along with Marshal's residences throughout the Yugoslav republics.[23]
In the post World War II period, the hotel went right back to being the cultural elite's favourite congregation spot.
With the post-war influx of people from Montenegro into Belgrade, the hotel cafe's summer patio also became a favourite hangout for the Montenegrin newcomers to the city. The perception that being seen drinking coffee while hanging out amongst the cultural elite at Hotel Moskva was an instant seal of approval, endured for decades.[11]
In the early 1970s, the hotel underwent an extensive publicly funded renovation. Among the individuals participating in the project was the architect Grigorije Samojlov, a White Russian émigré who had been living in Belgrade since 1921.[25] Among the various additions, he adorned the building's hallways with stained glass featuring motifs from Russian fairytales as well as stone mosaics with personal impressions and memories of Moscow and Russia before immigration to Yugoslavia.[26]
In 1974, the hotel restaurant added a poslastičarnica (locally customized version of a
Re-privatization
In August 2005, the hotel's umbrella legal entity, state-owned Moskva
At the July 2006 shareholders meeting, it was agreed to seek out a brand name partnership by hooking up with an established global brand. Specific brands being mentioned were
Around the
Throughout 2009 and 2010, four years after its re-privatization, the hotel finally underwent extensive renovation — from April until September 2009, the side facing Balkanska Street was refurbished, both internally and externally, with new furniture, wallpaper, drapes, curtains, bathrooms, flooring, and electronic locks.[14] From the fall 2009 until April 2010 the same was done with the side facing Terazije.[14]
Famous guests
Hotel Moskva is a
In fiction and popular culture
Hotel Moskva has been depicted or referenced in various works of music, film, and literature.
See also
References
- ^ Dragana Jokić Stamenković (28 May 2011), "Beograd na dvesta sputanih voda", Politika (in Serbian)
- ^ a b Lopušina 2008, p. 5.
- ^ Lopušina 2008, p. 6.
- ^ Lopušina 2008, p. 8.
- ^ Lopušina 2008, p. 9.
- ^ Lopušina 2008, p. 10.
- ^ Lopušina 2008, p. 11.
- ^ Gordana Čanović (18 June 2021). Жолнаи керамика у Србији [Zsolnay ceramics in Serbia]. Politika-Moja kuća (in Serbian). p. 2.
- ^ a b c Majstorice i stari kalupi;Politika, 31 January 2011
- ^ Čedomir Antić (2 June 2022). "Kanalizacija". Nedeljnik. Retrieved 9 September 2022.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Хотел на Теразијама променио девет држава;Politika, 22 January 2008
- ^ Politika daily, January 22, 2008, p. 23
- ^ Балканске успомене
- ^ a b c d Kako je „Velika Srbija” postala „Moskva”;Politika, 30 November 2009
- ^ Lopušina 2008, p. 22.
- ^ Lopušina 2008, p. 31.
- ^ Vek olimpizma u Srbiji;RTS, 25 July 2012
- ^ Aleksandar Miletić (22 February 2020). "Обележен 110. рођендан ОКС-а" [Celebrated 110th birthday of the Olympic Committee of Serbia]. Politika (in Serbian). p. 18.
- ^ Belgrade: A Cultural History;David Norris
- ^ Goran Vesić (15 November 2019). Теразијска тераса [Terrazije Terrace]. Politika (in Serbian).
- ^ Slobodan Kljakić (25 March 2012), "Na Dorćolu otvorena prva kafana u Evropi", Politika (in Serbian)
- ^ Lopušina 2008, p. 65.
- ^ Lopušina 2008, p. 67.
- ^ Lopušina 2008, p. 73.
- ^ Lopušina 2008, p. 89.
- ^ Lopušina 2008, p. 90.
- ^ a b c Jovanović, Jelena (6 February 2015). "Moskva šnit – više od 40 godina beogradskog brenda". CityMagazine.rs. Retrieved 17 September 2016.
- ^ Moskva a.d.
- ^ Prodat hotel "Moskva";Kurir, 16 August 2005
- ^ a b "Moskva" kao "Ric";Večernje novosti, 28 July 2006
- ^ Addmision to the Free Market-Hotel Moskva a.d. Beograd
- ^ HMSK
- ^ "Хотел на Теразијама променио девет држава".
- ^ Glas javnosti
- ^ "Šetnja duga 102 godine".
Sources
- Lopušina, Marko (2008). Hotel Moskva: prvih 100 godina (PDF) (in Serbian). Belgrade: Hotelsko-ugostiteljsko preduzeće Moskva. ISBN 9788687275003. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2013-09-28.