At last count, over 80 percent of Hong Kong, China’s total €966 million (approximately HK$8.845 billion) annual exports to Czechia was in jewellery. But interestingly, there really were no Laopu Gold Co. pieces to be seen at the opening of the glorious Fairmont Golden in Prague on 12 June. In fact, it wasn’t really an opening—it was a reopening, because the new building has been recreated as an exact copy of an original 1974 Brutalist style of what had opened in 1974 as Intercontinental Golden, funded by Pan Am.
The Fairmont Golden Prague, under GM Gerhard Struger, sure knew how to throw an opening party. There were dancers choreographed by the Prague National Theatre under an old concrete ceiling with Czech chandeliers, exactly a copy of the earlier one. Originally designed in the early 1970s by Carol Vilsack, the building has been rescued by local businesspeople who want to maintain the icon for the city.
Led by Michal Smrek, the inner team is software giant Pavel Baudiš, Avast co-founder Eduard Kučera, and rubber baron Oldrich Šlemr, who brought in architect Marek Tichý and interior designer Richmond International, and over six years ago, they all started work. Local art was commissioned, or loaned, by the investors and other Czechs. (On display, next to a guestbook signed by the first president of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel, is the first Oscar for the 1966 Czechoslovak New Wave movie, Closely Watched Trains, directed by Jiří Menzel, who succumbed to COVID—it’s on loan from his wife, Olga Menzelová.)
The revitalisation of the “Golden” has taken time because the nine-floor building is a concrete sculpture of dinosaur proportions. The original concrete all had to be replaced, but you wouldn’t know it just from looking at it. Take the ballroom, which still has a concrete ceiling inset with a couple of dozen recessed circles, of which 20 of the rebuilt indents are now decorated with Czech glass chandeliers.
In fact, there is glass everywhere. Go into the lobby and the front of the reception and concierge desks are glass. Fairmont Gold Suite 812, on the eighth floor, typically has a sliding door between the bedroom and the bathroom, which is golden-coloured Lasvit glass. And by the way, all the etceteras in the bedrooms are exquisite. The dual-purpose garbage pail, for instance, is not only covered in taupe leather, but has a lid. The bathtub has a beautiful bespoke wooden bath tray. And the bath towels are double the expected size.
Gerhard Struger, who had been on-site for about five years, said 2,000 people had been invited to the reopening and to prevent gatecrashers, entry was by personalised QR code. Struger had personally thought of everything—the on-site complimentary grooming salon had even done a full walk-in hair-cut, and the store cupboards were filled (2,500 oysters, 1,200 lobster, 400 kilogrammes of strawberries, 125 kilogrammes of tuna, and five kilogrammes of caviar, for a start). Absolutely everybody was there.
The party was Veuve Clicquot everywhere—1,300 bottles—complemented by at least a couple of dozen wine stations for red, white, and rosé. There was a martini bar. There were at least 10 different simultaneous parties. The one in the lobby, with an all-night band, was anchored by the fixed bar, over which hang more glass ornaments, all like giant prescription pills—chandelier sculptor and designer Kateřina Handlová took inspiration from the bubbles on the poster for Miloš Forman’s 1975 movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (as the bar is called Coocoo’s Nest, and the square being created in front of the hotel will be named for the Czech director. Also, it’s Forman’s year, as this year, his granddaughter Antonie Formanová is face of the 2025 Karlovy Vary International Film festival to celebrate half a century of the movie).
Also, on the ground floor, walkways took partygoers through a glass-lined corridor, brew stills behind—there were people sitting there, partying. Next door, in the hotel’s brewery-casual venue, there were dozens of beers on tap, with hot dogs slathered in daffodil-hued mustard. Even the rear terrace overlooking the Vltava river and its Art Nouveau Čech Bridge (finished in 1908 just after the death of Bohemian satirist Svatopluk Čech) became a party in its own right.
The lower-level ballroom hosted live entertainment in the form of cult singing sensation Ewa Farna and a saxophonist afterparty. There were more parties too, on the ninth floor of the hotel, which houses the hotel’s signature Zlatá Praha restaurant and bar. Everybody found a venue where they felt most comfortable. Cinderella famously cleared off at midnight but here it was four o’clock before 150 extras complementing the 320-room hotel’s own 300-strong team started clearing up. Put Fairmont Golden Prague on the must-visit list.
All images courtesy of Fairmont Golden Prague.
