Grand Hotel Europa, Art Nouveau palace hotel in New Town, Prague, Czech Republic

Grand Hotel Europa is an Art Nouveau building on a corner of Wenceslas Square in New Town, Prague. The five-story facade features curved lines, floral ornaments, and gilded details that run across the entire exterior.

The hotel was built in 1872 for Wilhelm Hauner to Josef Schulz's neo-Renaissance design, on the site of the Bindrův zájezdní hostinec. Its square-facing wing was demolished and rebuilt in geometric Art Nouveau between 1903 and 1905 by Bedřich Bendelmayer and Alois Dryák, with Bohumil Hypšman and Jan Letzel. Nationalised in 1951 as Grand Hotel Evropa, it reopened on 29 October 2024 as W Prague.

The building stands on Wenceslas Square, the central meeting point of public life in Prague, and visitors often stop to look at its ornate facade up close. The curved lines and floral details are easy to spot from the street and give a clear sense of what Art Nouveau looks like in practice.

The hotel reopened on 29 October 2024 as W Prague, a five-star W Hotels property, so the interior is again accessible to guests and visitors. The facade faces Wenceslas Square; the courtyard wing added by the Benoy studio holds 160 beds, conference rooms for 210 people, a wellness area and a panoramic restaurant.

The ornate interiors served as the model for the dining room of the film Titanic, and the building itself appears in Mission: Impossible (1996) and the Czech comedy Men in Hope. Franz Kafka gave his only author's reading in Prague here in 1912, in the mirror hall.