“Rather than building that from scratch—because we couldn’t afford that—and rather than finding a hotel, because that didn’t exist, we had to kind of go into the middle and the middle ground happened to be this incredible Art Nouveau defunct department store in this tiny little town called Gorlitz in eastern Germany. The shell of what you see in the movie was there—it was a lot of linoleum that got turned into those carpets. We built in the lobby, and the coat check, and the concierge area—all that stuff.”
The Grand Budapest Hotel is one of the nominees for the Production Design category at this year's Oscar. For more on its film locations, check out the article The Magnificent Film Locations of the Grand Budapest Hotel.