The Grand hotel was established ca. 1885 by Eustachy Jaksa Chronowski on the pramises of the elegant Prince Czartoryski Palace. Several years later the hotel was expanded, taking in adjacent buildings successively purchased by its enterprising enterpreneur. In 1890 work was started on merging all the buildings into one complex. The work was pursued according to designs prepared by Tadeusz Stryjeński. Great care was taken throughout to preserve the palace interior. A press correspondent made this comment in 1911:

The former Czartoryski palace contained valuable relics which had to be preserved and skilfully put over for use. Eustachy Chronowski did this with meticulous care as befits a really cultured man and today these relics represent a most unique ornamentation. Suits with beautiful coffered ceilings, lovely ornamented fireplaces, wall paintings and 17th century portraits are unique features rarely met in a hotel.

Care was taken to preservethe old interior decoration and the richly ornamented facades. Modern fittings and a hotel power plant were installed. A big, modern hotel emerged with suites for 150 guests, several restaurants including the famous Mirror Hall with quiet private rooms and loggias, a cake shop and a fancy Cafe.

The Jan Bisanz cafe, one of interwar Cracow's most elegant establishments, was opened on the hotel's premises in the 1920s. The cafe became the meeting place of the city's elite and artists. Painters, poets and writers used to give vent to their inspirations and ideas on a huge canvas hanging on one of the walls up to 1936.

The hotel's era of grandeur came to an end shortly after World War Two when it was taken over by state. Over the years the hotel fell into decay. It was only in 1989 that Wawel-Imos International, a company set up especially to refurbish the Grand, thorougly renovated the hotel under the supervision of Cracow's Historic Complex Revaluation Board. Modernised and adjusted to modern times, the Grand hotel continues its more then a century old tradition.