Qualla: InterContinental Athenee Palace Bucharest

InterContinental Athenee Palace Bucharest: Introduction

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Britchi Mirela, CC BY-SA 4.0. Heavy ornate furnishings, marble and gold pillars, great glittering chandeliers, and the deep settees placed well back in the recesses of the lounge as if inviting conspiracy: that is how A. L. Easterman of the London Daily Express described the lobby of the Athenee Palace in 1938. He was on assignment in Bucharest in the years when Romania was the chess board where every European intelligence service was making moves. The Athenee Palace was the room they all met in. C. L. Sulzberger of the New York Times settled in to wait for war and noted that the staff would happily change a guest's money on the black market. Countess R. G. Waldeck wrote that the hotel was the heart of Bucharest, topographically, artistically, intellectually, politically, and, if you like, morally. Spies sat at the same tables. Diplomats slipped envelopes across them. The piano played on.

Image: Britchi Mirela | CC BY-SA 4.0

InterContinental Athenee Palace Bucharest: First Reinforced Concrete in Bucharest

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Casaregala, CC BY-SA 4.0. The hotel was designed by the French architect Theophile Bradeau and built between 1912 and 1914 on the corner of Calea Victoriei and Strada Episcopiei, on the site of an old 19th-century inn called Han Gherasi. Han is Romanian for inn, a relic of the city's earlier Ottoman-influ...

Image: Casaregala | CC BY-SA 4.0

InterContinental Athenee Palace Bucharest: The Art Deco Remake

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Britchi Mirela, CC0. Between 1935 and 1937 the architect Duiliu Marcu completely modernized the interior and reworked the exterior in Art Deco style. Marcu was one of interwar Romania's leading architects, responsible for many of the institutional buildings that gave 1930s Bucharest its distinctive b...

Image: Britchi Mirela | CC0

InterContinental Athenee Palace Bucharest: What the Walls Heard

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rereader1996, CC BY-SA 4.0. The bartenders spoke five languages. The waiters knew which guests should not be seated at adjacent tables. The maids reported to multiple paymasters. Romanian intelligence, German intelligence, British intelligence, Soviet intelligence, all maintained networks of informants amon...

Image: Rereader1996 | CC BY-SA 4.0

InterContinental Athenee Palace Bucharest: Communism and a New Wing

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Neoclassicism Enthusiast 2, CC BY-SA 4.0. After 1948 the hotel passed into state ownership. The interiors were remodeled in 1983, and a new wing was added in 1965. Through the long Ceausescu years, the Athenee Palace remained Bucharest's pre-eminent hotel for foreign visitors, which meant it remained a primary collection...

Image: Neoclassicism Enthusiast 2 | CC BY-SA 4.0

InterContinental Athenee Palace Bucharest: What You See From the Windows

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrei S, CC BY 3.0. The hotel today operates under the InterContinental brand. In 2021, the rooms in the 1965 new wing were fully renovated. From the upper floors you look out across Revolution Square, where in December 1989 Ceausescu addressed his last crowd before being shouted down and forced to ...

Image: Andrei S | CC BY 3.0