Pekin

Description:

• This lemon-colored confection is situated at the crossing of two major arteries: Tverskaya Street and the Garden Ring Road. A plethora of dining and nightlife options, including the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall across the street, are close by. Its windows are reinforced to keep out the traffic din, but courtyard-facing rooms are still preferable to street-facing ones. Built in 1949 and named later in honor of Sino-Soviet solidarity, the Pekin fell into disrepair and Mafia hands in the 1990s. It has been undergoing gradual renovation in recent years, and about half of the rooms have been upgraded, with the upper floors converted into office space. The new rooms cost about 30% more than their older counterparts but boast wider, firmer beds and calmer, sleeker decor; some even have bidets. All rooms are spacious by Russian standards but the older rooms suffer narrow creaky beds, chipped furniture, and flowery wallpaper that seems to have absorbed 3 decades of cigarette smoke and dust. The thugs who made the Pekin notorious a decade ago have largely gone straight or elsewhere, and now the lobby is frequented by Russian and foreign businesspeople and tourists attracted by its location and reasonable prices.

• © Frommer's 2013

Awards:

Frommer's

•  Recommended 2010