Nerudova 212/16: The Golden Chalice
This renaissance house with its baroque exterior is typical of the residences in this part of the city’s Malá Strana (Lesser Quarter). Many of them carry baroque era cartouches with symbols of animals, birds or...
Tagged: house signs
Polská 1283/18: ‘The Assyrian Kings’
Prague’s well-heeled residential district of Vinohrady is renowned for its grand apartment blocks, built at the turn of the 20th century in a variety of historicist styles. Their monumental entrances and lavish facades present a...
Liliová 17 and Karlova 18: The Golden Snake
By common consent, the first coffee-seller appeared in Prague in 1714. Originally from Damascus, the lively Armenian entrepreneur Gorgos Hatalah worked the streets of Malá Strana selling ‘Turkish’ coffee heated on a portable brazier, and...
Hellichova 553/18
Between the left bank of the river Vltava and Petřín Hill stand two churches dedicated to St Lawrence (Svatý Vavřinec). The more substantial of the two, on the hill itself, is a baroque structure built...
Malé náměstí 456/14: The Black Pony
The Black Pony stands in the heart of the Old Town, one of a row of attractive renaissance town-houses which in the early fifteenth century were home to the city’s first pharmacies. Its neighbours include...
Ječná 519/34
This framed Mother and Child appears on the ornamental facade of a neo-baroque house in Prague’s New Town. The building, at the corner of the major thoroughfare Ječná (Barley Street), is home to a traditional...
Husova 231/12: U tří praporečníků (The Three Standard-Bearers)
The three figures adorning this building in Prague’s Old Town first appeared in the 1580s, at which time the house was known as The Three Angels. In 1877 a radical neo-Renaissance reconstruction took place: a...
Celetná 569/34: The Black Madonna
The ‘House of the Black Madonna’ occupies a corner plot between the streets of Celetná and Ovocný trh (Fruitmarket) in Prague’s Old Town. Its facade and the unique interior were designed in 1911 by Josef...
Nosticova 466/5: ‘U dvou hrdliček’
The house known as ‘The Two Turtledoves’ was built in 1620 for the mayor of Malá Strana, Baltazar Globic. In 1726, it was remodelled by the architect Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer for the royal carpenter Josef...
28. října 378/15: The Golden Hive
Two separate mediaeval houses stood here at the lower end of Wenceslas Square until the year 1572, when the Betengl (or Wettengl) family had them joined together and substantially enlarged. In 1621, the property was...
