The construction of the buildings which today house the Grand Hotel Europe, located in the very heart of St. Petersburg on Nevsky Prospekt and Mikhailovskaya Ulitsa, began in the 1820s. The first hotel on this site, known as the 'Cuolon', appeared in 1830 and was then integrated with neighbouring houses by the Italian architect Carlo Rossi, who employed a Neo-Baroque façade to unite the existing buildings.
This united structure evolved into the 'Hotel de l'Europe', the dream child of the Evropeyskaya Hotel Company, which opened its doors in January of 1875. At the turn of the century the Swedish-Russian architect Fyodor Lidval redesigned much of the hotel's interior, adding the beautiful Art Nouveau features which still remain today.
The hotel reinvented itself numerous times through the First World War and post-revolutionary periods as a hospital, orphanage and centre of bureaucratic operations. Following extensive and painstaking renovation between 1989 and December 1991, the building re-opened as the 'Grand Hotel Europe'. Great care was taken to preserve the hotel's distinct architecture, both the interior of the hotel with its turn-of-the-century Art Nouveau décor and the magnificent Neo-Baroque façade were restored to their former glory.
The building itself has been classified as a national and cultural landmark and is to be preserved as a historical monument.
