Cosmos Hotel is perhaps the most impressive Soviet-time hotel in Chisinau. But there is definitely something more than just a hotel here. When Chisinau was chosen as the capital of Moldova, 200 years ago, this area became the edge of the town. All the important streets were meeting there and even nowadays, this region has the same role as back then.
I like this area because it is so contradictory somehow. Seeing all those Soviet industrial buildings – you start feeling the “heaviness” of the grey concrete Soviet style. Then you notice huge modern shopping centers, and you admire how luxurious they are. Then you go to the stairs of Cosmos Hotel and you see a gorgeous big statue of a soviet communist and the large boulevard in front of him. When the statue was installed here in the 1950s, just a few cars a day would pass by. Today – hundreds of cars and people are moving back and forth just in front of you.
You go behind the Cosmos Hotel and you are shocked by how quiet it is there, how beautifully arranged the 5-floor apartment buildings and how slow the inhabitants of those apartment buildings are walking. Another world.
This is the main impression that Chisinau leaves our guests with. It is old and new, poor and luxurious, noisy and quiet – all this at the same time.
