Lyčkovo náměstí 460/6: Elementary School

In September 1424, the radical Hussite warrior Jan Žižka (who four years earlier had won a significant victory against the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund at Vitkov Hill) signed a treaty of reconciliation with the moderate Utraquists which temporarily unified the Hussite cause against Rome. The paper was signed at Špitálské pole (Spitalfields), overseen by the conservative Jan Rokycana.

Appropriately, when a new school was built in 1904 in the area of Špitálské pole (today’s Karlin), this important history lesson was recorded in an enormous seven-square-metre mural by the artists Jan Köhler and Karel Klusáček. Žižka is the eye-patched character sitting to the right.

M[aster Jan] Rokycana reconciles Žižka with the citizens of Prague at Spital Fields 14 September 1424

The school itself, built in the art nouveau style to a plan by the architect Josef Sakař, was inaugurated in September 1906 by the Archbishop of Prague Lev Skrbenský, and received an imperial visit shortly thereafter from Emperor Franz Josef I. A second mural by the same hands depicts the 1836 coronation celebration of his uncle Ferdinand I, which took place at the nearby military hospital of Invalidovna.

National Celebrations for the Coronation of King Ferdinand the Benign at Invalidovna, 14 Sept. 1836