ESO Hotel

ESO Hotel at Cerro Paranal
Southwest facade of the hotel at dusk
Map
General information
TypeHotel
CountryChile
Website
www.eso.org/public/
Star trails over the remote ESO Hotel (Paranal Residencia) in Chile

ESO Hotel at Cerro Paranal (or Residencia) is the accommodation for Paranal Observatory in Chile since 2002.[1] It is mainly used for the ESO (European Southern Observatory) scientists and engineers who work there on a roster system. It has been called a "boarding house on Mars", because the desert surroundings are Mars-like,[2] and an "Oasis for astronomers".[3] It is not a commercial hotel, and the public cannot book rooms.[4]

The architect was the Chilean-born Hernán Marchant, a current Professor and Associate Dean at North Carolina State University, the architecture firm was Auer+Weber+Assoziierte of Germany and constructor was Vial y Vives Ltda. of Chile.[1] It won the Cityscape Architectural Review Awards in 2005.[4] In 2004 it won the new and overall Leaf-Awards.[4]

Operated by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), an organization based in Munich, the VLT (Very Large Telescope) is reportedly the most powerful telescope based on Earth.[5]

  1. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference esor was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ ESO Hotel, Cerro Paranal, Chile Archived 2013-04-27 at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference resid was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ a b c Hotel on Mars
  5. ^ Alpiner, Michael. "Six Of The Most Ambitious Tourism Projects". Forbes. Retrieved 2021-09-29.