THE CARLTON Savoy hotel in Bratislava opened in June 1913 under the ownership of Henrich Prüger. Prüger bought three buildings on Hviezdoslavovo Square: the National Hotel in 1908, the Gervaysch house in 1911 and the inn named At the Green Tree in 1912. He completely reconstructed all three buildings in 1912-1913 into a new hotel complex named the Carlton Savoy that was considered the most modern hotel of its time.
The inn At the Green Tree first opened at the end of the 18th century and was rebuilt in 1844-1846 according to the design of Ignác Feigler into a two-storey hotel. In 1912, one year before the building’s incorporation into the Carlton Savoy, the hotel already had electric lighting, bathrooms, a bowling alley, a café and restaurant, a cinema and even a garage for cars within it.
The hotel was visited by a number of important guests such as Franz Liszt, Johannes Brahms, Arthur Rubinstein, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein.
In 1848, Lajos Kossuth, a political reformer who inspired and led Hungary’s struggle for independence from Austria, delivered a powerful speech from the balcony of the inn to cheering crowds in what some historians have called the “Revolution of 1848”.
The first screening of a film in Bratislava took place in 1896 and beginning in 1905 the Elektro-Bioskop cinema operated with the hotel’s complex.
This postcard painted by Béla Marx probably shows the opening of the Carlton Savoy. It is interesting to note that the hotel’s name reportedly comes from Prüger, who proposed combining the first letters of the names of the hotel’s previous owners, Karol and Antónia (Tonka) Palugyay.
