Cosmos Hotel is situated in the north-east of Moscow, opposite the Russian Exhibition Centre. The hotel was named after close located Cosmonauts avenue and monument to Space-explorers. Space theme is used in design of hotel interiors.
Cosmos Hotel was built at the project of Sefri French company. Soviet architects also took part in development of this project. In those years the district of Russian Exhibition Centre was surrounded with number of hotels, but they were all five-storey and multibuilding. 25-storey building of Cosmos Hotel stood out against a background of other hotels with its height and eccentricity of appearance — it was built in the form of horseshoe. Witty Moscowers nicknamed it Polstakana at once.
Opening of the hotel took place on July 18, 1979, and was a real festival with participation of many popular actors, including French singer Joe Dassen. Hotel complex boasted 1780 rooms of different categories, restaurants, and bars with the capacity of 3600 places.
During Moscow Olympic Games, the Olympic press-centre worked in this hotel. Further fate of the hotel was concerned with Russian Exhibition Centre — a lot of members of exhibitions stayed here. On the basis of Cosmos Hotel international events, such as International congress of astronauts (1984), The World Youth Festival (1985), International Chess Olympic Games (1995) were hold. During three years on the territory of the hotel popular TV programs (The song of the year, Morning star, etc.) were hold. Alla Pugacheva, Garri Kasparov, etc are among famous guests of Cosmos Hotel.
In 2004 Cosmos Hotel accommodated seven millionth guest Michel Collins from Great Britain. Nowadays this hotel is one of the most popular hotels in Moscow. Partly this popularity is due to Russian Exhibition Centre's proximity, partly other reasons. After the demolition of Moscow Hotel, Russia Hotel, Leningradskaya Hotel, this hotel became the largest four-star hotel of Moscow, placed foreign tourists. The owners of Intourist net refused to close Cosmos Hotel on reconstruction and made a decision to renew the building and change equipment.