Ten centuries of European architectural heritage
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 enlightened; items from...
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...
Situated on the banks of the river Vltava about twenty miles north of Prague, the chateau of Veltrusy was commissioned in 1704 for the counts of Chotek. Work began around the year 1706 to a tightly symmetrical plan...
Between 1736 and 1737 the original renaissance palace by Giovanni Battista Aliprandi was rebuilt in the high baroque style for Prince Paul Henry of Mansfeld, probably by the architect Franz Ignaz Prée. Despite late rococo styling throughout the...
This monumental early baroque palace in the Malá Strana district was constructed between the years 1623 and 1630 for Count Albrecht von Wallenstein (Czech ‘Valdštejn), one of the most significant and colourful figures of the Thirty Years’ War....
Perched on a rocky bluff on the west bank of the Vltava, the Barrandov studios were intended as the centrepiece of a broader plan – an entire art deco suburb designed to accommodate the burgeoning 1930s film industry....
There have been Princes of Liechtenstein resident in Prague since the early 1600s. Karel ‘the Bloody’ – the first prince and founder of the dynasty – was put in charge of the execution of the leaders of the...
Taking his cue from the construction of Les Invalides in Paris, Count Petr Strozzi left directions for the foundation of a similar institution in Prague for veterans and wounded soldiers. Work commenced in the district of Karlin in...
Josef Mocker (1835-99) was the architect who, more than any other, embodied the spirit of the Gothic Revival in Bohemia. His vast legacy includes major additions to at least twenty existing buildings, among them St Vitus’s Cathedral, the...
The Strahov monastery has been home to the order of Premonstratensians (White Canons) since 1143, and to the relics of Saint Norbert – the order’s founder – since 1627. The complex of buildings is remarkable for its painted...
