Ever checked into a hotel that was originally built to serve the state? A new photography book argues you should look twice at the blocky, often unloved buildings scattered across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, because they're vanishing fast.
Socialist Hotels, by photographer Elena Amabili and published by FUEL, is billed as the first book dedicated entirely to the architecture of hospitality in this part of the world. Rather than focusing on one city or one country, it surveys the state-constructed hotels that once dotted the socialist map — buildings erected not for profit but as instruments of policy.
That purpose shaped everything about them. These hotels were built to house visiting government workers as well as ordinary citizens travelling within the socialist system, which meant they had to look and function a certain way. Standardised design, imposing scale and a mix of officialdom and leisure were baked in from the start. Amabili's photographs treat them as more than relics: they're a record of a social and cultural experiment expressed in concrete and glass, and a legacy that's genuinely idiosyncratic when you stop to look at it.
Why should a traveller care? Because many of these buildings are still operating as hotels today. If you've ever stayed in a vast, slightly faded hotel on the edge of a Polish, Slovak or Caucasus town and wondered why it exists at all, this is the answer — it was never built for the market. Photographing them now also captures a moment: as tourism and redevelopment reshape post-Soviet cities, these structures are being renovated beyond recognition or demolished outright. The book is effectively a survey of a building type that may not survive the century.
It also changes how you travel through the region. Once you know what to look for, the socialist hotel becomes a lens on the whole landscape — the spa towns, the workers' resorts, the conference blocks in capital cities. For anyone interested in brutalism, Cold War history or design photography, it doubles as a route-planning prompt: the buildings in the book are real places, many of which you can still walk into, book a room in, and experience first-hand, complete with the quirks of a floor plan designed by a committee rather than a hotelier.
Socialist Hotels by Elena Amabili is out now via FUEL, the publisher behind a run of well-regarded books on overlooked architecture and landscapes. If your next Eastern Europe trip involves more than just the old towns, it's worth packing — or at least scrolling before you go.