Hotel “Europe” is a hotel with a hundred years of original history. Over the years, such famous personalities as Vladimir Mayakovsky and Marc Chagall have stayed here. It was built at the dawn of the nineteenth century, when Minsk was part of the Russian Empire. Then, at the intersection of Gubernatorskaya Street and Cathedral Square, a building of a new hotel in Minsk was erected, which had 2 floors. The pre-revolutionary hotel was built at the expense of the richest Minsk merchant dynasty of that time, the Polyakov family.
The hotel immediately gained great popularity among Minsk bohemia and guests of the then ordinary provincial city, which was repeatedly captured on the canvases of artists of that time.
In 1884, after a fire, the hotel became known as “Europe”. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the hotel was reconstructed and became a six-story hotel. In addition, the building changed externally, it was rebuilt in the then fashionable Art Nouveau style in Russia. The expressive facades overlooking Cathedral Square and Gubernatorskaya Street were distinguished by the high quality of their decorative workmanship. The hotel was owned at that time by brothers Grigory and Yakov Polyaks. In 1913 The first-class restaurant of Saulevich, ladies’ and men’s hairdresser’s, and a reading room worked in the hotel. Each of the 130 rooms had a telephone, a washbasin, electric lighting, water heating, and a bath. The hotel was famous for its excellent service at that time. We also note the fact that it is “Europe”, and not any other hotels in Minsk, that can boast of being that it was here that the elevator began to run for the first time in the city. A car or carriage was sent to the trains. At Saulevich’s restaurant, visitors were entertained by the Romanian and Viennese ladies’ orchestras.
The hotel building did not survive the war and was completely destroyed. So, for about 60 years, no one even thought about restoring this famous in its time, amazing, the largest civil building in the pre-revolutionary city of Minsk. But the circumstances were different. The hotel was suddenly remembered already in the 21st century.
In 2004, the City Hall of Minsk was instructed to rebuild the hotel building in compliance with the stylistic features that this hotel had at the beginning of the last century. The President of the Republic of Belarus signed a decree that the hotel must comply with the status of “five-star”.
The revived “Europe” opened its doors to visitors in 2007.
