From brutalism to modernism, via futurism – the Socialist Hotel is a unique architectural and cultural phenomenon that is collectively documented in these stunning photographs for the first time. Would you check in to a Socialist Hotel from an era when hospitality came second to ideology? These state-constructed buildings were used by visiting government workers, ordinary citizens – and even the occasional capitalist guest from the West. Today they are a fascinating legacy of a Soviet architectural, social and cultural idiosyncrasy.

This epic photographic project – spanning 153 hotels across 31 countries – chronicles the architecture of hospitality and leisure in Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet space. Many were built in imposing styles: brutalist and modernist structures emphasising scale, functionality and the power of the state. Quirkier constructions used mosaics, tiles and stained glass as cultural references, to reflect the traditions of individual countries.

Collected here for the first time are an amazing range of examples, from the grand Socialist Realism and neoclassical details of the Stalinist era (such as the Interhotel, Georgia) and the Soviet Modernism that marked a shift away from excess towards austere, concrete structures (Hotel Traian, Romania) to the futuristic and gravity defying (Sevan Writers’ House, Armenia). As socialism waned the hotels became privatised, increasingly undergoing modernisation or even demolition, to be replaced with global brands. Socialist Hotels is a unique survey of a contemporary Soviet architectural diaspora, documenting remaining examples of this disappearing phenomenon.