Metropol hotel tours how to get there. Visit the Metropol Hotel - a journey into the bins of the "Moscow legend"! Room with antique furniture

Our project also invites you to "go to the rooms" and visit one of the most luxurious hotels in the capital - the legendary Metropol Hotel. On this tour, you will get acquainted with more than 100 years of history of this luxurious building, its unique architecture, interior and exterior decoration, luxurious rooms and halls with antique furniture and interior items, as well as the legendary restaurant under a colorful glass dome!
In the program of excursions around and inside the Metropol:

* The founder and first builder of the Metropol is the famous merchant, philanthropist and patron of the arts Savva Mamontov.

Why did Savva Mamontov want to build such a hotel, what prevented him and who completed it later in the current form familiar to us. Why the fire broke out in December 1901 and what the Moscow newspapers wrote about it. Why did this place become almost a “personal office” for another famous Savva?

* Where can you see the first urban works of the famous sculptor N. Andreev, which the former Muscovites spoke of as “shame and disgrace”.

What architects and artists worked on the construction of the hotel and why was the Metropol dubbed the Tower of Babel in the early 20th century? What stood on this site before, where does the Neglinka River flow underground and which windows of the hotel look at the only historical remnant of the Kitaigorod wall?

* What are the main events that took place in the Metropol who liked to stay in this hotel and what the hotel turned into after the October Revolution.

* Luxurious halls, corridors, stairs, rooms, a restaurant and its halls in the prism of the times of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Inside the hotel, the tour is conducted by its oldest employee, who met and accompanied many eminent guests in the Metropol. From the first mouth, he will tell everyone exclusive stories from the life of the Metropol, show his bins - halls, corridors, stairs, restaurant. During the tour, one or two hotel rooms will be shown, which will be free from guests.

Program

Street of capital millionaires - Nikolskaya, former Tsarskaya street. The oldest street in Moscow and its name is also the oldest - it is 600 years old! It was along this street that the sovereign's departures from the Kremlin were made, it was built up with towers of noble boyars and tsar's associates, and even Nikolskaya Street was paved "royally" - over the logs of an ordinary pavement they laid a flooring of planed boards for the softness of the course of crowned carriages.The boyars Saltykovs and Sheremetevs, the princes Vorotynsky, Buynosov-Rostovsky, Khovansky, Trubetskoy lived here ... Times change, owners of houses and fashionable shops change, one thing remains unchanged: the prestige and high cost of every centimeter of the "royal" Nikolskaya street and surrounding lanes. During the 2018 FIFA World Cup, the luxurious pedestrian Nikolskaya Street turned into the main spontaneous fan zone for fans from all over the world, and became a real personification and hospitable "hostess" of Moscow.
A stone's throw from Nikolskaya, you will find an incredible surprise and a bonus of our trip - a warm welcome at the most luxurious and famous Moscow hotel "Metropol". Here we will have a unique opportunity to feel like a millionaire and find out what real chic and luxury of a five-star service is. Metropol is the most famous "luxury" hotel, built by the great Russian philanthropist Savva Mamontov at the end of the 19th century. It is unlikely that so many events unfolded within the walls of any other institution in the capital, because Fyodor Chaliapin sang under the glass vaults of the restaurant, and Stalin shook hands with Mao! You can touch the secrets of the famous hotelduring a fascinating excursion accompanied by the Metropol historian Ekaterina Egorova. You will admire the chic rooms*, furnished with incredible luxury and splendor, in which world celebrities once lived. The main decoration and pride of the hotel is not only the rarest antique rarities, pieces of furniture, paintings, old vases, but an indescribable atmosphere of good quality, respectability, wealth in the best sense of the word.Welcome compliment from the hotel - a glass of the famous Prosecco* sparkling wine as a gift(for adults) and a small but incredibly tasty dessert.
And yet, only here you can buy a rare book about the history of the Metropol and the biographies of its distinguished guests - "Metropol - a Moscow legend."
Wonderful Moscow "luxury" weekend - luxurious and very informative!

The 5-star Metropol Hotel is located in the center next to the Bolshoi Theatre.

Before the Metropol, this place was a hotel with baths of the merchant Chelyshev, which was bought out in the 1890s by Savva Mamontov, who planned to build a chic hotel complex in the Art Nouveau style here. Construction began in 1899, but soon the magnate suffered a financial collapse, and the building was completed by new owners.

In 1905 the luxurious Metropol was built.

The facades of the building are decorated with majolica panels, some of them, including the central “Princess of Dreams”, were made according to Vrubel’s sketches.

Pay attention to the sculptural frieze "Seasons" above the balconies: it is located along the entire perimeter of the building.

The hotel is also encircled by a majolica inscription with a quote from Nietzsche: "Again, the old truth, when you build a house, you notice that you have learned something." After the revolution, on one side of the facade was added “Only the dictatorship of the proletariat is able to free humanity from the oppression of capital. V. Lenin.

Due to its central location and proximity to the Kremlin, the Metropol was at the center of revolutionary events: battles between the junkers and the Red Guards under the leadership of M. Frunze went on for six days, the building was shelled by artillery.

After the victory of the proletarians in the Metropol, Sverdlov placed his reception room on the second floor, meetings of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee were held in the restaurant, at which Lenin and Trotsky spoke, and the Bolsheviks lived in the rooms.

In the late 1920s, the Metropol again became the main Moscow hotel. Over the years, Bertolt Brecht, Bernard Shaw, Sergei Prokofiev, Alexander Kuprin, Mao Zedong, Pierre Richard, Gerard Depardieu and other guests of the highest rank lived here.

Let's go to the first floor. Hall where the hotel reception is located:

Restaurant "European". Marble columns and walls, moldings, mirrors and paintings on the ceiling - the interior of the restaurant is designed in a classic style.

Luxurious restaurant "Metropol" with a stained-glass roof. Breakfasts are accompanied by live sounds of the harp.

Staircase with large stained glass windows.

Hotel atrium.

The corridors are covered with soft carpets. Pictures hang on the walls - originals and copies of famous works.

In the halls - antique furniture. A well-preserved antique Karelian birch suite on the VIP floor.

Wall lamp-angel.

There are no two identical rooms in the Metropol, everywhere there are different antique interior items and furniture, chic chandeliers of the 18th-20th centuries, in many apartments the walls are covered with silk, the ceiling is painted and stuccoed. Each room is a kind of mini-museum. The area is small: suites are 40-50 sq m each, presidential suites are about 100 sq m.

The interior of one of the suites:

Alcove with bed.

View from the window on Teatralny Proezd and Neglinnaya Street.

Another suite. The decoration is made in delicate light colors; this number is often chosen by newlyweds.

The view from the window of this suite is on Theater Square, the Bolshoi Theater, the building of the State Duma.

Many art objects belong to the state, their safety is regularly checked by the state commission.

Presidential number 3364. In 1993, Michael Jackson lived here, Kim Jong Il, Jacques Chirac, Marlene Dietrich, Elton John, Arnold Schwarzenegger and many other world celebrities stayed here. The furniture is antique, from Karelian birch. In the display cabinet - precious Meissen porcelain. Accommodation costs 85,000 rubles per day.

Lion on an antique "Steinwein" piano made in Hamburg in 1913. It was played by Paul Mauriat and Michel Legrand during their visits to Moscow. Michael liked the piano too.

The bedroom is quite small. The bed is also antique, slightly smaller than the modern ones.

If the rooms in the Metropol are different, then the bathrooms are the same everywhere and do not differ in anything special. There is a small sauna in the presidential suite.

Jackson asked for a room with a view of the KGB building.

The second presidential number.

Armchair by Venetian craftsmen.

A few more details of these VIP apartments:

Everything in the Metropol is saturated with history, here you can feel the spirit of antiquity, which is carefully preserved. Unique architecture and antiques in the Art Nouveau style, an impressive list of historical figures who lived here - this is really a hotel-museum, a landmark of Moscow.

How to get to the Metropol Hotel

By public transport: st. m. "Teatralnaya", "Okhotny Ryad", "Revolution Square", "Lubyanka" then 2-3 minutes on foot.

Address: Teatralny proezd, building 2

We love hotels. And we love hotels with history. And especially - stories about hotels with history. Therefore, they considered it inhumane in relation to their own curiosity not to take the opportunity to visit the famous Moscow Metropol with a guided tour, past the elegant building of which they ran many times.

It was here that Berlioz and Bosoy insistently suggested that Woland move in, our parents used to go to the hotel restaurant of the same name as one of the most fashionable places in the Soviet capital, and foreigners, world stars, and, of course, prima and soloists still stop here with great pleasure. tour on the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre.

Few people know about excursions to one of the oldest hotels in Moscow. On Thursdays and Saturdays, as groups form, they are led by Metropol historian and art critic Ekaterina Egorova. Our group was quite large, about twenty people, you can see and hear perfectly, but to take a purely interior photo is already a problem. But we did it.

The tour of one of the most striking historical and architectural monuments of Moscow Art Nouveau begins from the former main entrance overlooking the Theater Square. Here, behind the front doors between two marble she-wolves, we are told about how the glorious history of the Metropol began. In place of the old saunas, Savva Mamontov, a philanthropist and patron of the new (at that time) art, planned to build ... a grandiose cultural and entertainment complex that would accommodate restaurants, art galleries, a theater, a hotel part, and even a sports center with a skating rink. In 1899, a competition was announced, and among the architectural works presented, Mamontov liked the project of William Walcott. True, after some time Mamontov was accused of embezzlement, and the building passed to the new owners, who decided to invite architects Lev Kekushev and Nikolai Shevyakov to finalize the project and continue building the building now as a luxury hotel. The hotel was opened in 1901. However, in the same year there was a severe fire that required significant reconstruction of the building. And only in 1905 the second birth of the Metropol took place - its grand opening.

So we find out the age of the she-wolves guarding the former front entrance - 110 years. We peer at the bas-relief on the ceiling, depicting a man and a woman, trying to unravel its symbolism.

The hall made of Belgian and Swiss marble was designed by the same workshop that created the front interiors of the Pushkin Museum im. Pushkin. Here is a cozy bar "Chaliapin", where the excursion is paid for, and after its completion a glass of champagne or fruit drink is offered.

From the entrance we move to the elevator lobby. The floor is no longer Swiss marble, but still granite, with history. The walls are lined with onyx. And here we discover what the Metropol is especially good for: here you can not only admire the murals, mosaics and stucco moldings of the hands and hands of famous artists, come close to ancient sculptures, paintings and vases from different eras, but also sit on sofas , armchairs and chairs, which are at least the same age as those she-wolves at the entrance. The antiques serving here as intended were transferred to the Metropol from the treasuries of the Gokhran. It is interesting that Ekaterina Egorova, talking about the hotel, speaks in the first person: “they stayed at our place”, “we were transferred”, “we kept it”, reducing the pathos of a status profitable establishment to a national treasure and her especially beloved Moscow house.

The frame of the elevator shaft with Art Nouveau floral mosaics has been preserved on all floors, although the cabins themselves have, of course, been replaced with modern ones. They say that it was this elevator lobby that Kazimir Malevich depicted in one of his early paintings.

The group then ascends to the fourth floor, splitting between the new freight elevators and the staircase that winds around the old elevator shaft. There are stained-glass windows in the windows, sculptures on the pedestals, paintings on the ceiling. Already here the multi-style interior of the modernist Metropol is clearly manifested. Then Ekaterina leads us to the atrium, from where wide corridors lead to the rooms and numerous halls of the hotel.

On the walls of the atrium are photographs of famous guests, through which it is so easy to trace the rapid history of the Metropol, and at the same time the whole country. The hotel was in the center of revolutionary events. After 1917, the Bolsheviks settled here: the leaders of the People's Commissariat lived in the rooms, the meetings of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee were held in the halls, Sverdlov arranged a reception room for himself in one of the most popular rooms at that time, Chicherin placed his People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs in the hotel - the sleek "Metropol" became famous as the Second House of Soviets (First - "National"). Chaliapin, Vrubel, Ryabushinsky, Komissarzhevskaya, Bryusov and Bunin retreat for a while before the portraits of Stalin, Lenin, Bukharin and Sverdlov - and again they are guests of a luxurious hotel: Mandelstam, Mariengof, Kuprin, Barbusse, Prokofiev, Vertinsky lived here, Brecht, Shaw stayed , Steinbeck ... you can’t remember everyone - in the late 20s, the Metropol again becomes a first-class hotel. True, the process of eviction of apartments dragged on for several decades: the last one was vacated only in 1964.

A gallery of portraits of famous guests and guests wraps around the walls of the atrium on all floors. By the way, the columns at the corners of the railing on each floor are decorated in their own way: somewhere they are crowned with a golden fanged pan, somewhere - a gentle white-faced maiden. A characteristic feature of the Art Nouveau era - uniqueness, originality of decoration - can be traced in the number of rooms: 390 rooms - and all of them are different in layout and interior decoration.

In 1986, the dilapidated hotel was closed (together with the country) for restructuring, that is, restoration. The period of new history for both began in 1991.

The group continues on to the Boyarsky Hall, whose pseudo-Old Russian coloring fades the modernist spirit of the Metropol. Under the domed vaults, painted with patterns in the boyar style (Chekhonin, Kuznetsov) and decorated with imitation of ancient Russian mosaics and castings, marvelous acoustics. They say that a huge crystal chandelier of complex shape and weighing a ton plays a certain role in this. The restorers had to work hard here: the hundred-year-old walls were repainted many times - Chekhonin's paintings were hidden under nine layers of paint!

The carved balcony and the antique bear in the corner are also referred to Ancient Rus'. The scarecrow donated to Metropol to maintain the Russian tradition of placing stuffed animals in restaurants with national cuisine is about a hundred years old. Once it stood in the Savoy and was allegedly described by Steinbeck in the Russian Diary.

And then, finally, we go down to the floor below, we pass through an elegant hall with already familiar antiques - armchairs with carved swans, a table with nymphs, a picture with a bay at night, an ornate gilded mirror, stucco molding, columns, candelabra ... It is here that we are told about about how each of the almost 800 antique items returned or transferred for temporary storage from the state reserves of the Metropol is checked and protected: they filled a unique architectural object with completely unique content.

Along a wide corridor lined with red and green carpets along the paintings and stucco on its walls, Ekaterina leads us to inspect the "luxury", as the guide affectionately calls room 3305 overlooking the Theater Square. Pierre Cardin, Pierre Richard, Gerard Depardieu stayed in a bright, cream-lilac striped room ...

A bed with an alcove, a wood-panelled ceiling: clouds in the blue sky, and two green parrots slyly peeking out of the wooden frame. We believe the French should have appreciated the artist's sense of humor.

The beauty, gathered to the delight of rich guests, is spoiled only by surprisingly dirty windows. Ekaterina explains that cleaning windows is a big problem for the hotel, which only climbers can handle. And soon they will probably come to us.

On the way to the next suite, we are told about some of the guests: the infamous Lee Harvey Oswald lived in this suite, here is Vladimir Pozner with his family after returning to the country; pets are not allowed in the Metropol, but here, as an exception, Patricia Kaas lived with her hairless dog, Diana Vishneva chooses the same number for herself on every visit with tours to the Bolshoi. “We had everything,” Ekaterina adds, not without reason.

The second suite I examined was baroque gold with pale blue rims. 18th-century furniture, silk wallpapers, a portrait of a maiden in blue, a view of Theater Square.

This number is loved by newlyweds and European princesses visiting Moscow, and even, they say, queens, like the then-ruling Spanish Sophia and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.

In the end, the guide leaves the “sweetest” – one of the two presidential suites, which also has something to add to the multi-layered and complex history of the Russian Metropol.

Kim Jong Il, Marlene Dietrich, Jacques Chirac, Placido Domingo, Paul Mauriat, Elton John and Michael Jackson lived in room 3364... Surely the list of honored guests would have stretched for a long time, but the name of the king of pop music causes a special revival in the group, and Ekaterina recalls, how difficult it was to ensure security for Jackson during the entrances and exits from the hotel, how the Metropol was once again besieged - now no longer revolutionaries - by the singer's fans in 1993, how he wished to live by all means with a view of the Lubyanka.

At the end of the hour, we again went down to the elevator lobby on the first floor and went into the hall of the Metropol restaurant, famous throughout Moscow. It was here that Chaliapin sang, Lenin and Trotsky spoke, meetings of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee were held (and after the meetings the hall turned into a dining room); it was here that Styopa Likhodeev went on the eve of the most memorable morning of his life.

Now breakfasts are served here in the mornings (from 7:30 to 10:00) for guests and people from the street. Approximately 2 thousand rubles per person for a morning buffet and the opportunity to drink a cup of coffee to the sounds of a live harp in a magnificent neoclassical hall of the 1910s, which many prominent figures of art and architecture of the early 20th century had a hand in, for example: the ceilings of the hall were designed by the famous Shukhov engineer.

You can consolidate what you have learned at the starting point of the tour - in the pretty Shalyapin bar with a glass of champagne and a discussion of what you see.

At first glance, the Metropol, many-sided and contradictory, seems to be a collection of disparate objects framed by a kind of Russian Art Nouveau. But this solid spy of a whole century of our complex history is not only a unique monument of architecture and history, a museum-repository of a rich artistic heritage for the elite (everyone can see Vrubel's majolica panel on the facade, but not everyone can appreciate the interior paintings based on the sketches of Vasnetsov and Korovin) , but also a clear bearer of a largely contradictory national spirit and character: refined and solid, businesslike and majestic, pro-Western and Great Russian, patriarchal and cosmopolitan, integral and many-sided. Here it is, "Metropol" from the inside.