Sova’s Mills / Museum Kampa
The banks of the Vltava contain a rich heritage of industrial architecture, from water towers to breweries, from weirs to watermills. The island known since the 18th century as ‘Kampa’ (possibly from its use as...
Category: historicist
The combination of rapid industrial growth and a thirst for political independence saw an explosion of civic and domestic building in the increasingly wealthy city of the 19th century. Prague became the drawingboard for revivalist architecture of every conceivable colour: from classical and neo-renaissance to Strawberry Hill gothic and pseudo-baroque.
Národní 1009/3: Czech Academy of Sciences
Of all the work of Vojtěch Ignác Ullmann, perhaps the most outstanding is the building that today houses the Czech Academy of Sciences (Akademie věd). Ullmann’s grand neo-renaissance plan saw off competition from a large...
National Museum
The seeds of a national museum were sown as early as the 1780s with the establishment of the Royal Bohemian Society of Learning, ancestor of today’s Academy of Sciences. Its members were wealthy, aristocratic and...
New City Hall (Nová radnice)
New City Hall (Nová radnice) — not to be confused with the mediaeval New Town Hall (Novoměstská radnice) — was built between 1908 and 1912 according to a design by Osvald Polívka. At first, the...
Basilica of Saint Wenceslas, Smíchov
The township of Smíchov, on the left bank of the Vltava, was a centre of Christian worship from the earliest times. The first Carthusian monastery in Bohemia stood close to here, from its foundation in...
Charles Bridge: Saints Cyril and Methodius
On 3 September 1890, a powerful flood washed away three arches of Charles Bridge. Two eighteenth-century statues by Ferdinand Maxmilián Brokoff toppled into the river and were smashed to pieces. Enough was salvaged to be...
Křižovnická 61/12: U Dvou štítů
The name František Sander is principally connected with the architecture of navigable waterways, particularly the Elbe and the Vltava, in the early part of the 20th century. He was responsible for the impressive Vltava embankment...
Statue of František Rieger, Riegrovy sady
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...
Senovážné náměstí 860/30: Corn Exchange
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...
Na Příkopě 18 & 20: Zemská banka (Provincial Bank)
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...
