Lietuva Hotel was designed as the most important representative building of its kind in the young state, which was to welcome foreign guests: “by decision of the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Lithuania, it was designed to house a foreign guest club”. Of course, an important object had to have an appropriate architectural form. According to the architectural aesthetics concept prevalent at that time, festive mood was to be created by splendid and decorative spaces. As noted by interwar Lithuanian interior researcher L. Preišegalavičienė, inspiration for it most likely came from late examples of foreign historical Baroque. Nevertheless, besides historicism, the hotel also alludes to the “national style”: “floor ornament, arranged from black-and-white tiles, reminds of folk textile patterns”; traditional symbols can also be found in the ceiling patterns. The object replaced “another one-story building at that place” and was put against the side of an “old two-story hotel built at the end of XIX century with Metropolio Kavinė (Metropolis Coffee House)”. “The building was overhauled in 1986: its service spaces on the first floor were expanded, the roof above the entrance and the wooden panels of the lodge and the staircase were renewed (drafted by V. Būdvytis)”.
Vaidas Petrulis