The eight-storey Hotel Polissya stands on the south side of Lenin Square, its sign still legible in Cyrillic. Built in the late 1970s for visiting officials and the Communist Party delegations who came to inspect the showpiece atomic city, it was the tallest hotel in the area. In the days after the accident, helicopter spotters used the roof as an observation post for directing sand and lead drops onto the reactor.
The lobby is now a shell, the lift shaft open. Most tours walk you to the foyer entrance and back; reaching the roof is forbidden and the upper floors are structurally suspect.