Hotel Jalta (now the Jalta Boutique Hotel) was built between 1956 and 1958 on Wenceslas Square in Prague. Initially owned and run by the State travel agency Čedok, it was a popular choice for visitng foreign government and business officials. It was designed by Czechoslovakian architect Antonín Tenzer in a modified Socialist Realism style.
The building was luxurious for its time and the facade included hand-carved marbles and travertine. Deep below in a second basement the hotel houses a nuclear shelter with a capacity of around 150 people. The shelter has walls around three metres thick and originally had an emergancy exit ladder which emerged in the square in front of the hotel.
The hotel was also ocupied by the Czechoslovakian Secret Police (Státní Bezpečnost or StB) who used another underground room to monitor hidden microphones and listen in to telephone calls of foreign visitors. The existence of the shelter and its secrets only became known in 1990 after the so-called velvet revolution.
Regular tours of the underground complex are held (in Czech and English) by the hotel. Parts of the shelter holds other Cold War artefacts.
