an illustrated guide to Czech architecture and heritage
The design for the new National Technical Library was conceived in 2000 by a team of young architects – Roman Brychta, Adam Halíř, Ondřej Hofmeister and Petr Lešek – following the decision to transfer the collection of 1.2...
Jan Masaryk was born in 1886 at the Villa Osvěta in Vinohrady. The third child of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia, Jan acted as ambassador to London from 1925, and as Foreign Minister of the...
The curved steel and glass frontage of the Generali Insurance building (Martin Kotik, 1993-4) reflects the neo-baroque facade of the Deminka Palace hotel on neighbouring Škrétova street (1886)
Between 1966 and 1974, the Prague Stock Exchange, situated near the top of Wenceslas Square, was re-developed as the Federal Assembly of Czechoslovakia with the addition of a massive trussed roof floating above the original structure on enormous...
‘Ernest Denis, French-born Slavic scholar and historian, lived in Prague from 1872-1874’. As the pre-eminent French expert in Czech history, Nîmes-born Ernest Denis was one of the key supporters of the First Republic (1918-1938). He was honoured in...
Not far from the Charles Bridge, in Prague’s historic Malá Strana district, appears this plaque celebrating the life and work of Ladislav Zelenka (1881-1957), a cellist with the celebrated Czech Quartet. Founded in 1892 by Josef Suk and...
The plaque below the bust tells that ‘From 1907 to 1912, the Czech poet and Nobel Prize winner Jaroslav Seifert attended this school’. The school in question, in the district of Žižkov, is now named after the writer....
The plaque on this building in Prague’s Vinohrady district commemorates František Kvapil (1855-1925), Czech poet and translator of Polish literature
A memorial to the Slovak painter Cyprián Majerník (1909-1945), who spent most of his working life in Bohemia. His paintings were strongly influenced by contemporary events, especially the Spanish Civil War (Don Quixote became an important figure of...
