Ten centuries of European architecture & heritage
The palace was built for Franz Helfried, Baron of Kaiserstein, whose coat-of-arms appears above the window. Originally a renaissance building dating from 1630, it was substantially restyled in 1714 by the Italian architect Giovanni Battista...
The Golz-Kinský Palace in the Old Town Square, nowadays part of the National Gallery, is a superb example of late baroque style. In its courtyard Hermann Kafka had his haberdasher’s shop, and the palace housed...
The Jesuit church of the Holy Saviour (Sanctus Salvator) was originally constructed in 1578. From 1638 to 1648, it was remodelled in the baroque style by the youthful Italian architects Carlo Lurago and Francesco Caratti,...
The House of the Red Cross was built in 1761 on the site of an earlier building on a plot close to Kampa island. Having fallen into a state of disrepair, it underwent extensive restoration...
The facade of the 16th-century house ‘U Zlaté Studny’ (The Golden Well) was decorated in 1701 with these reliefs by Jan Oldřich Mayer. Clockwise from top left: Saint Wenceslas, Saint John of Nepomuk, Saint Roch,...
By the end of the seventeenth century, the house that previously stood here – at one time owned by the father of the engraver Václav Hollar – had fallen into disrepair, prompting its sale to...
The 18th century painting of the archangel Michael has below it the following rhyming prayer: ‘Ochraňuj, Bože, dům tento drahý / který se zove U zlaté váhy’: ‘We pray that Thy protection never fails /...
Betlémské náměstí (Bethlehem Square) is most famous for its chapel which from 1402 onwards became the de facto base for Jan Hus and his reformist congregations. Opposite the chapel stands this fine baroque house: the...
The memorial plaque on this building in Uhelný trh (Coalmarket) is of particular interest to historians of Czech culture and language. ‘Here stood the house of the Golden Cross, where, on 4 February 1719, the...
Above a baroque lintel in the Old Town of Prague appears this inscription, dated 1773: ‘To him and those who come after him’ (‘postebis’ corrected to ‘posteris’). The building is now part of the Philosophical...
