an illustrated guide to Czech architecture and heritage
The monumental congregational church in Prague-Dejvice was designed by Jiří Stibral and built by Alois Zima between 1925 and 1927. Combining religious, educational and residential functions, the building today continues to serve as the headquarters of the Czechoslovak...
Built between 1890 and 1891 on high ground of Střešovice to the west of Prague, this romanesque-style church provided a much-needed place of worship for a rapidly expanding population. The church’s dedication to Saint Norbert – a 12th...
The 14th-century church of Saint Stephen was one of two ecclesiastical foundations built specifically to serve the parish of Charles IV’s New Town. Construction took place between 1351 and 1392, close to the existing rotunda originally dedicated to...
The village of Lány, twenty miles from Prague, stands in a region of fields and forests used for hunting since at least the tenth century. But it was in 1587 that Emperor Rudolf II forged a powerful link...
Completed in 1875, the Provincial Maternity Hospital in Prague represented the state of the art in nineteenth-century obstetrics. At that time, many young mothers died in childbirth; so in 1867, on the orders of Count Franz Thun-Hohenstein, construction...
The north Bohemian town of Liberec may be only seventy miles from Prague but its origins as an important centre of the Flemish and German textile trade are evident everywhere – not least in the soaring opulence of...
Built on the site of the fifteenth-century House of the Black Hare, this neo-renaissance palace in the Venetian style was erected in 1857 for Vojtěch Lanna, founder of the Kladno steelworks. At one time thought to be the...
This villa by the banks of the Botič – currently home to the Prague Gentlemen’s Fly Fishing Club – dates from 1738, and is therefore only slightly younger than the nearby Church of St Nicholas, the oldest extant...
The exact authorship of the mediaeval clock (‘orloj’) in Prague’s Old Town Square is confused, but it seems to have been the result of a collaboration between Mikuláš of Kadaň and Jan Šindel, an astronomer and vice-chancellor of...
The distinctive russet-coloured Vinohradská tržnice (Vinohrady market hall) was constructed on the site of a former machine factory in 1902, one of several new covered marketplaces built at that time to serve Prague’s rapidly expanding population. The neo-renaissance...
