an illustrated guide to Czech architecture and heritage
Until February 1912, this corner building in Prague’s New Town was due to be reconstructed in a more traditional historicist style, more sympathetic to the baroque church of the Holy Trinity next door. However, between June and September...
This two-storey townhouse ‘U Červeného pole’ (‘The Red Field’) is an ancient survivor in a street otherwise dominated by much taller buildings from the 1900s, such as the nearby ‘U Myšáka’. The earliest records show that until 1397...
Of the many celebrated Czech architects of the first decade of the twentieth century, perhaps the most prolific was the Austrian-born Osvald Polívka. Best known for civic projects such as Prague’s new City Hall (1911) and Municipal House...
This early baroque palace in the Malá Strana district was built between 1662 and 1675 for Jan Hartvik, count of Nostitz (‘Nostic’ in Czech orthography). For many years attributed to Francesco Caratti, later analysis suggests that the palace...
Born in 1818, František Ladislav Rieger was from his student days a passionate advocate of Czech nationalism. His 1848 speech in Vienna won him the admiration of František Palacký, who was to become not only a firm friend...
Although agricultural trading had taken place in Prague since time immemorial, it was only in 1882 that plans were drawn up for a central exchange for arable commodities. In 1894 this first purpose-built corn exchange (plodinová burza) was...
The vicinity of the Czech National Bank has been a trading quarter ever since the Middle Ages, when precious metals regularly arrived at the city’s east gate from the silver mines of Kutná Hora. Nearby is the Týn...
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Czech politics was dominated by one question: how to gain greater autonomy from the Austrian empire (or indeed how to break with Austria entirely). The argument was supported by a...
Radio broadcasts in Czechoslovakia began on 18 May 1923, making the fledgling state only the second country in Europe after Britain to enjoy such a regular service. For the first two years, programmes were broadcast from a scout-tent...
On the eastern slopes of Letná hill, overlooking the Vltava, this unusual modernist pavilion looks as if it has been teleported from some future time into its present location. In actual fact that’s not far off the truth....
The Business Academy of Prague, founded in the district of Karlín in 1909, was obliged to move to larger premises in Vinohrady in 1925. Its new home was a constructivist building by František Kavalír and Pavel Smetana, a...
