Located on Rustaveli Avenue, the city's main thoroughfare, the hotel occupies the historical Soviet-era building IMELI, constructed in the 1930s, and a 32-floor skyscraper, built in the 2010s.

[3] The IMELI building, an example of the Stalin-era Socialist Classicism, was constructed in Tbilisi, the capital of then-Soviet Georgia, between 1934 and 1938 based on the design by Alexey Shchusev to house a Tbilisi-branch of the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute.

Both the exterior and interior are richly decorated with wooden and metal works, as well as with various Georgian marbles and natural stones.

[4] After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the building was used for government purposes and some Communist-era symbols and decorations were removed from the facades.

In the process of renovation, the investor started to demolish the building without due permission and IMELI lost a number of its original elements, leading to a series of protests from preservationists.