Hotel
Wien.
Six Viennese hotels reveal how travel and overnight stays have changed since 1600.
Independent prototype · about 8 minutes · English, German, French
What can a hotel tell us about its time?
Hotels do not explain the entire history of a city. But they make certain changes tangible: Who could travel? What counted as comfort? What happened there besides sleeping? Six Viennese hotels lead into six well-documented stories.
Six windows. Six real stories.
- 1600
A lodging business has been documented on the site of today’s Hotel Stefanie since 1600.
- 1848–1866
Grand Hotel National combined a hotel, café, event hall and photographic studio.
- 1873
New hotels welcomed an international audience during the World’s Fair, including the Imperial.
- 1938
The Nazi expropriation of Grand Hotel National destroyed ownership and public life inside the building.
- 1950s
Hotel Prinz Eugen shows how modern and international Viennese hotels wanted to appear after the war.
- 1991–today
At Altstadt Vienna, art, individual rooms and everyday hotel life come together.
Every room shares the same imperfect ink line and colour world.
The building becomes a timeline.
The experience begins with an illustrated Viennese hotel façade. Each window opens a different period. Inside, visitors can choose to examine three details while light, movement and quiet room sounds respond to what they discover.
Concept, research, illustration and interaction.
A self-initiated project by Isabella Kohout / Salon Format, bringing together historical research, multilingual learning, hand-drawn rooms, animation and restrained sound design.
The rooms are illustrative interpretations rather than documentary reconstructions. Historical claims are placed in context and linked to their original sources inside the experience.
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