Hotel, Heritage hotel in Bad Kissingen, Germany.

The Kaiserhof Victoria is a hotel complex formed from two classicist buildings at Am Kurgarten 5 and 7 in Bad Kissingen. Its older part, the corner house at Kurhausstraße 7/Schloßstraße, was built in 1835/36 as the Hotel Karl von Hess, a three-storey block designed by Johann Gottfried Gutensohn. The neighbouring Hotel Kaiser followed in 1839/40, built four storeys high for Cornelius Heile. Both are listed monuments.

Founded in 1835, the building became a destination for prominent figures from politics and the arts throughout the 1800s. Its development reflects the rise of Bad Kissingen as a major spa town during that era.

The hotel's name recalls its most famous guest: Empress Elisabeth of Austria, known as Sisi, stayed here in 1862 and again in 1864 with her husband Franz Joseph I. That 1864 visit, the so-called "Kaiser-Kur", brought the Russian tsar couple Alexander II and Marija Alexandrowna and Bavaria's Ludwig II to Bad Kissingen. The sculptor Michael Arnold, based in the town, made a welcome arch for the 1865 imperial visit.

The complex is a listed monument (Bavarian list no. D-6-72-114-4) at Am Kurgarten 5 and 7, near the Kurhausstrasse/Schlossstrasse corner, so it is seen from the street rather than entered as a hotel. The neighbouring Krugmagazin dates from 1839, and the brine reservoir built in 1851 stands at today's Salinenstrasse 8.

The hotel's name preserves a spelling detail: founder Karl von Hess signed with "K", not "C", as local historian Werner Eberth confirmed from a handwritten will. In 1839 a district judge ordered every property to be named, so Hess called his house Hôtel vis à vis Ragoczy, a name King Ludwig I disliked and which was dropped within months.