In 2001 while travelling Europe as a young student, Whelan discovered an old house on the outskirts of Prague. Beginning life as a domestic residence, the building was put into service as a KGB training facility. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union it was repurposed into a hotel and in 1996 it was in an adaptation of a Danielle Steel novel playing itself: a cold war location. The photographs in the series, devoid of human presence, present intimate interior details, traces of a place that hid so much for so long. Today, along with its clandestine history, Hotel Mondial is gone forever.