Hotel Moskva, Belgrade

Hotel Moskva (; ; ) is a four star hotel in Belgrade, one of the oldest currently operating in Serbia. The building has been under governmental protection since 1968. Originally operating as a 36 room inn within the multi purpose Palace Rossiya, whose almost three year construction and January 1908 opening represented a major investment of the Russian Empire in the Serbian economy, Hotel Moskva eventually expanded its facilities to take up the entire palace.

Hotel Moskva is located on the Terazije square in Belgrade's downtown core, administratively part of the Stari Grad municipality. It lies at the intersection of three streets: Terazije, Prizrenska, and Balkanska. Its location on top of Terazijska Terasa provides a wonderful skyline view of Novi Beograd, across the Sava river. The entire area of Terazije is abundant in underground streams, causing major problems for large scale construction projects in the area, including the hotel, nearby Palace Albanija, and the underground passages below Terazije. Today, there are still 11 active water springs underneath Hotel Moskva.

In the late 1890s, during the Obrenović royal house rule—specifically King Alexander I's—in the Kingdom of Serbia, the empty plot of land at Terazije where Hotel Moskva is located today, was sold cheaply by the Belgrade municipal authorities to local merchant Boško Tadić. By the early 1900s, together with his wife Stana, Tadić completed a simple one story family house on the plot. At the time, the Terazije plateau around the house was lined with large chestnut trees that provided nice shade over a small open market where market sellers from Zemun, across the Sava river in neighbouring Austria Hungary, as well as peasants from the Belgrade outskirts came to sell their produce. In essence, the open market was an upper town outpost of the larger Zeleni Venac open market located several hundred meters down nearby Prizrenska Street.

After Tadić's passing, his wife Stana inherited the property. Known around town as Stana Boškova (Boško's Stana), she immediately sold the property to the Arilje born Marjanović brothers, Bogosav and Miloš, well known restaurateurs who had already owned and managed several kafanas throughout Belgrade. Additionally, Bogosav Marjanović was revered as a veteran of the Herzegovina Uprising, which he voluntarily joined in 1875, fighting under the command of Golub Babić. The brothers quickly turned the family house into an inn, eventually naming it Velika Srbija—reportedly after the eponymous informal co operative made up of regular guests from the Marjanovićs' other kafanas. Branislav Nušić, a famous writer and regular of Belgrade kafanas, wrote that the name had actually been suggested by another kafana regular Stanislav Kaćanski because it was the gathering spot for "Serbian gentlemen to drink bermet and feed on patriotism". Yet another regular at the Velika Srbija inn's kafana was Stevan Sremac, distinguished writer who reportedly spent many late nights there and even modified his work schedule at his professorial job in a Belgrade gymnasium so that he can sleep late in the morning. By 1902, the Marjanovićs sold the inn to merchants Mitar Vranković and Nikola Vučković who in 1904 flipped it to Svetozar Vukadinović, former director of the Serbian Shipbuilding Company who had just returned to Serbia following an exile of sorts. Born in 1860 in Novi Sad, Austria Hungary in a staunchly nationalist Serb household of priest Jevtimije "Jevta" Vukadinović, young Svetozar moved across the border into Serbia where he became an administrator in various shipbuilding companies before being forced into exile due to running afoul of King Milan I Obrenović's pro Austrian economic policies. During his exile Vukadinović spent time in Russia, as well as in Austria Hungary just across the border in Novi Sad and Zemun, waiting for the right moment to return to Serbia. That moment eventually came following the June 1903 Obrenović overthrow. Though he bought the centrally located Velika Srbija, ambitious Vukadinović had no interest in running an inn. Instead, he travelled back to Imperial Russia looking to parlay his newly acquired Belgrade property into a larger business venture. Calling on his Russian connections, Vukadinović managed to get some interest from Roman Ivanovich Poitzl of the Rossiya insurance company about enabling the company to enter the Serbian market via opening a branch in Serbia. They additionally agreed an ambitious project of building a luxurious multipurpose palace in place of Vukadinović's inn that would serve as the branch headquarters. In 1905 they requested architectural design proposals for a future palace to be submitted to the panel consisting of two architects from Saint Petersburg, famous Vienna architect Otto Wagner, and Belgrade architects Andra Stevanović and Nikola Nestorović. Backed by the Russian architects and Otto Wagner, the design by the Zagreb based architect Viktor Kovačić (1874–1924) got selected, with the Belgrade based architect sr's (1857 1917) design supported by Stevanović and Nestorović coming in second. Still, the Rossiya's directorate eventually picked Ilkić, bringing him over to Saint Petersburg in order to continue working on the design along with Russian architects. How much of Ilkić's original design was changed in Saint Petersburg is unclear, but according to art historian Draginja Maskareli, the fact that the original construction plans have been signed by Rossiya's chief architect Pawel Karlovich Bergstresser (1851 1920), as well as the fact that Moskva's final facade contains elements of Saint Petersburg secession, it is reasonable to assume that there were changes.

The construction began in March 1905. Sheer size of the project attracted many Belgraders who gathered daily around the construction site, watching the excavation and laying of the foundation. Right away, the project ran into unexpected problems when it was discovered that the soil under the Velika Srbija inn is full of hardened loam as well as underground springs and subterranean streams, creating additional budgetary needs. Eighty two wooden beams, 5m in length and 30 cm thick, were placed in the palace's foundation followed by 30 wagons of boiling iron in 9 meter long rods, and 10 wagons of hard Ripanj stone. A 2.2m thick concrete panel was then placed over the foundation. The brick laying had not started until spring 1906. The construction work was performed by the civil engineer sr and the bricklayers from Crna Trava while the supervising engineer was the project design architect Ilkić himself. Reinforced concrete part of the job was managed by architect Matija Šnajder. The surface of the outer walls from the second floor to the roof was lined with yellowish tiles decorated with green coloured ornaments. The ceramic lining was brought in from the Zsolnay factory in Pécs, Austria Hungary. The tiled façade starts from the first floor and spans to the roof. The tiles are yellowish, with green embellishments. The casts used to mold these specific tiles is kept in the factory to this day. The upper part of the hotel's façade was laid with a maiolica decorative relief titled 'Glorification of Russia', featuring an image of Roman god Neptune, symbolizing Imperial Russia's yearning for maritime dominance. Ilkić's design employed a Secessionist style with skillfully incorporated ancient Greek elements, quite daring for that time, giving Belgrade—a city of around 70,000 inhabitants—a modern face during the transformation it was undergoing at the turn of the century. The most impressive feature, even at first glance, is the smooth and shiny façade, made of ceramic tiles. Upon construction, Hotel Moskva inside the Palace Rossiya had only 36 hotel rooms.

The Rossiya palace (in Serbian: Palata Rosija) was finally opened on Tuesday, 14 January 1908 as the biggest privately owned building in Serbia at the time. Its importance to the country was evidenced in the fact that it was personally opened by King Peter I of Serbia. Another part of the opening ceremony was held three days later on Friday, the 17th of January with the King's Guard, the Royal Serbian Army's most elite unit, staging a concert. In addition to Hotel Moskva, the palace housed a kafana, an exclusive restaurant serving specialties from the French and Serbian cuisines, looking at the city from across the river Sava in the late 1900s and early 1910s, three structures clearly grabbed immediate attention — the Saborna church with its bell tower, the Royal palace with its three domes, and now also the Rossiya palace. Politika, the Serbian newspaper of record, pronounced Palata Rosija "the most expensive and the most beautiful Russian house in the Balkans". A memorial plaque at the entrance into the hotel commemorates the event. Similarly, the Journalists' club and the Writers' club both moved into the palace.

The hotel had a role in the post World War I Serbian literary scene. Arriving in 1919 to a war ravaged city that still didn't have a fully restored electrical grid and water supply, novelist Miloš Crnjanski described Belgrade as being "wrecked and ugly—full of holes, ruins, weeds, uncertainty, sensational political events, and returning writers from all corners of the world". Crnjanski proceeded to establish Grupa umetnika, a small but enthusiastic collective of writers, painters, and musicians eager to provide the city with a new beginning in art and culture. They did not form a coherent school or movement, but their meetings, discussions, and polemics over the nature of art provided an engaging and stimulating atmosphere for a younger generation of Modernist writers amidst the Belgrade post World War I ruins. In addition to Crnjanski, the group that gathered the pre war and post war generations featured Sima Pandurović, Rastko Petrović, Stanislav Vinaver, Ivo Andrić, Momčilo Nastasijević, Stanislav Krakov, Branko Lazarević, etc. They met in Hotel Moskva's kafana, because, according to Crnjanski, it was the only place with light. Leon Trotsky stayed at the hotel while the French linguist and historian fr wrote a poem about the hotel, "Moskva, the giant house". The 1938 French film Ultimatum — directed by Robert Wiene and Robert Siodmak, and starring Dita Parlo and Erich von Stroheim — was filmed in the hotel.

In spring 1941, with Kingdom of Yugoslavia invaded and quickly conquered by Nazi Germany before getting carved up into several Nazi client states, Gestapo moved into Hotel Moskva, transforming it into its headquarters. Not liking its references to Russia, they also renamed it Hotel Velika Srbija, after the original inn. that quickly became popular and remains one of hotel's staples until present day. The original Moskva šnit recipe, that had in the meantime been trademarked, was put together by the restaurant's then pastry chef Anica Džepina. had its 82.83% purchased by the Belize based off shore investment fund Netwest Finance represented by Serbian businessman Mile Dragić for €11 million. Right away on 13 September 2005, the hotel's new owners decided to start trading the hotel's shares on the Belgrade Stock Exchange as HMSK. At the July 2006 shareholders meeting, it was agreed to seek out a brand name partnership by hooking up with an established global brand. Specific brands being mentioned were Four Seasons, and one of the Marriott brands such as Ritz Carlton, The pictures of the famous visitors are in a hotel hallways.

Hotel Moskva has been depicted or referenced in various works of music, film, and literature. Miroslav Krleža's NIN Prize winning 1962 novel Zastave features several references to Hotel Moskva. Set in the Balkans during the turbulent 1912–1922 period, it follows the lives and fates of some 20 characters; each of them of different profession, pedigree, and financial means, but from the milieu of Serbian, Croatian, and Hungarian intelligentsias. At one point, one of the main characters decides to take a peek into Hotel Moskva's kafana where, as he says with contempt, "wet tobacco is smoked" and "Byzantine intrigues are drawn up". Klopka, a 2007 neo noir film set in the post Milošević Serbia exploring how far is a financially strapped father willing to go in order to come up with funds for his ill child's surgery, features a key scene in Hotel Moskva's cafe where the mysterious man played by Miki Manojlović makes an offer to the sick child's father played by Nebojša Glogovac of paying for his son's surgery in return for the man carrying out an assassination.