Hotel Bristol

Hotel Bristol was a luxury hotel on Unter den Linden. It was designed by architect Gustav Georg Carl Gause and opened in 1891. It had 350 rooms and a garden. The Bristol was on a block near Brandenburger Tor, between the Unter den Linden and the Behrenstrasse, quite close to another luxury hotel : the Adlon.

The hotel opened 15 years after the opening of the by then leading luxury hotel Kaiserhof. It also competed with the nearby Central-Hotel. The hotel initially had the address Unter den Linden 5–6, but since then the numbering of the buildings on the street has changed.

In 1904, following the hotel's bankruptcy, the Hotelbetriebs-Aktiengesellschaft (now Kempinski) acquired the hotel. 

The Tea Room

On February 15, 1944, an Allied air raid destroyed the Hotel Bristol. After the war, the Soviet Union expanded its embassy area to include the former hotel.

The Hotel Bristol was one of the most distinguished luxury hotels in Berlin. In 1904 it had 350 rooms and a garden. A hotel expert described it in a travel guide published in 1905 as the "most international" of Berlin hotels. The hotel's bar was popular with wealthy young naval officers during World War I.

Hotel Bristol appears in Volker Kutscher's newly appeared novel "Olympia". One of the persons of the novel stays there during the Berlin Olympics 1936 (thanks to Jörn Bier for this information).

The hotel appears also in a novel by Theodor Fontane. Vicki Baum worked there in the 1920s and for her novel Grand Hotel, she drew on her experiences there.