Socialist Hotels

153 Socialist-era hotels across 31 countries
From brutalism to modernism, via futurism the Socialist Hotel is a unique architectural and cultural phenomenon that is collectively documented in these stunning photographs for the first time.

Would you check in to a Socialist Hotel from an era when hospitality came second to ideology? These state-constructed buildings were used by visiting government workers, ordinary citizens and even the occasional capitalist guest from the West. Today they are a fascinating legacy of a Soviet architectural, social and cultural idiosyncrasy. This epic photographic project spanning 153 hotels across 31 countries chronicles the architecture of hospitality and leisure in Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet space. Many were built in imposing styles: brutalist and modernist structures emphasising scale, functionality and the power of the state. Quirkier constructions used mosaics, tiles and