The Park Inn by Radisson Berlin Alexanderplatz is the tallest building and the eleventh-tallest structure in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

and the 29th-tallest building and tallest hotel-only building in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. The 37-floor high-rise is in the northeast of

Alexanderplatz () ( en, Alexander Square) is a large public square and transport hub in the central Mitte district of Berlin. The square is named after the Russian Tsar Alexander I, which also denotes the larger neighbourhood stretching from in the nort ...

in the central

Mitte Mitte () is the first and most central borough of Berlin. The borough consists of six sub-entities: Mitte proper, Gesundbrunnen, Hansaviertel, Moabit, Tiergarten and Wedding. It is one of the two boroughs (the other being Friedrichshain-Kreuzb ...

district and has a height of .

History

Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R0513-0027, Berlin, Alexanderplatz, Hotel

The complex was built from 1967 to 1970 in the course of the redevelopment of Alexanderplatz when it was located in

East Berlin East Berlin was the ''de facto'' capital city of East Germany from 1949 to 1990. Formally, it was the Allied occupation zones in Germany, Soviet sector of Berlin, established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors were known as ...

. It was designed by the team of Roland Korn, Heinz Scharlipp and Hans Erich Bogatzky. However, the design as built differs in the shape and location of the tower on the lot from that envisaged in the 1964 plan for redevelopment of the square. The hotel opened as the Hotel Stadt Berlin, part of

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

Interhotel Interhotel was an East German chain of luxury hotels. It was founded in 1965 as a chain. Originally, the hotel chain consisted of a hotel each in Berlin, Erfurt, Jena and Magdeburg, two hotels in Chemnitz (then Karl-Marx-Stadt) and five hotels i ...

chain. It was a four-star hotel and mainly served for the accommodation of Comecon representatives. There was a panorama restaurant on the 37th floor and unusually fast

elevator An elevator or lift is a wire rope, cable-assisted, hydraulic cylinder-assisted, or roller-track assisted machine that vertically transports people or freight between floors, levels, or deck (building), decks of a building, watercraft, ...

s for the time and place. In 1993, after

German reunification German reunification (german: link=no, Deutsche Wiedervereinigung) was the process of re-establishing Germany as a united and fully sovereign state, which took place between 2 May 1989 and 15 March 1991. The day of 3 October 1990 when the Ge ...

, it was renamed Forum Hotel Berlin. In 2003,

Rezidor Hotel Group Rezidor Hotel Group AB, originally SAS International Hotels A/S and then Rezidor SAS Hospitality A/S, Rezidor SAS Hospitality Group AB (publ), was a listed hotel group company. Originally founded by Scandinavian conglomerate SAS Group as a hotel ...

became the operator of the hotel, which was renamed to Park Inn Berlin-Alexanderplatz and then Park Inn by Radisson Berlin Alexanderplatz. A casino, the highest in Europe, was located in the restaurant until November 2010. There is a public viewing platform on the roof. All the rooms were refurbished starting in 2001 at a cost of

€ The euro sign () is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone and unilaterally adopted by Kosovo and Montenegro. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists o ...

20 million. Between May and November 2005 the entire

façade A façade () (also written facade) is generally the front part or exterior of a building. It is a Loanword, loan word from the French language, French (), which means 'frontage' or 'face'. In architecture, the façade of a building is often t ...

was replaced; the 6,800 new mirror-glass panes cost €3 million. In October 2006, two antenna masts were erected on the roof, bringing the total height of the building to . In December 2006 the hotel and the attached real estate parcels were acquired by Blackstone Group.Archiv: Alexanderplatz: Blackstone Group - Bebauung Block D1-D3
, Senatsverwaltung für Stadtentwicklung, retrieved July 3, 2010

Base building

The base of the tower rises from a three-story commercial building that houses a

Burger King Burger King (BK) is an American-based multinational chain store, chain of hamburger fast food restaurants. Headquartered in Miami-Dade County, Florida, the company was founded in 1953 as Insta-Burger King, a Jacksonville, Florida–based res ...

, an ice cream parlour, and some small stores. The top floor offers direct access to the adjacent Galeria-Kaufhof. For 15 years, the ground floor and basement levels housed Berlin's first

Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; h ...

electronics store (like Galeria-Kaufhof, a division of

Metro AG Metro AG is a German multinational company based in Düsseldorf which operates business membership only cash and carry stores primarily under the Metro brand. Until 2020 it was also active in general retail business through Real division, wh ...

), but in March 2009 this relocated to a new adjacent building. The future of the hotel and especially the base building are uncertain; plans to rebuild Alexanderplatz drawn up in the early 1990s envisage demolition of the hotel or at a minimum of the base building to enable erection of three new high-rises.

References

External links

* * {{Structurae, 20016118, Park Inn Berlin Alexanderplatz
Official website of the Park Inn Berlin Alexanderplatz
Buildings and structures in Berlin Skyscrapers in Berlin Hotel buildings completed in 1970 Hotels in Berlin Skyscraper hotels in Germany Park Inn by Radisson Rezidor Hotel Group

History

Base building

See also

References

External links