This Art Nouveau style hotel has been so carefully and self-consciously orchestrated that it is almost unnerving in its cold, slick presentation. If you want to experience a real modern Czech aesthetic, and are not so fussed about warmth and comfort, then move on in.
Telephone: +420 225 022 000
Price: from EUR 280
Receive a free Hg2 guide when you book a room online
The new sister hotel to the Fenix (see below), the Central has been constructed as a flagship venue for the entire K + K chain. The building was a hotel (of the same name) back in the 19th century, before it was transformed into a theatre in the 1920s and a cinema in the 1930s.
Designer Alison Clarke has maintained many of the original Art Nouveau features, fusing them with stark modern touches such as the eye-catching glass and perspex multifunction cube that commands the main hall, and which houses a conference room below and a breakfast room on top.
Rooms are geared towards corporate and leisure travellers, with comfortable, linear furnishings, free internet, LCD screens and – in the older part of the building – lovely high ceilings (the rooms in the new section have pleasant views onto a garden area).
The wonderful stairs and lift retain their original look, contrasting with the swish neon bar, and don’t miss the roofless sauna in the health club, where you can lie down and gaze at the marvellous cupola above.
