Ten centuries of European architectural heritage
Postal services in Bohemia started in 1526, when mounted couriers made the first deliveries between Prague and Vienna, the twin seats of the Habsburgs. But it was not until the reign of Maria Theresa in the 18th century...
In 1928, the city of Brno hosted the Exhibition of Contemporary Culture in Czechoslovakia. For the main pavilion, the design of Josef Kalous was selected: a V-shaped cathedral of reinforced concrete, its two naves terminating in a single...
Nowadays the municipal court of Prague (business division), this great ship of a building was constructed between 1926 and 1928 as the headquarters of the national Tobacco Company. As a young man, the architect, Alois Dryák, had been...
The first trains passed through this northern suburb of Prague in 1850, but it was not until 1873 that a station was constructed to service the coal industry that had grown up in the loop of the Vltava....
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. As often in the case of such...
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...
The exponential growth of Prague in the second half of the nineteenth century placed particular pressure on the city’s fresh water supply. Ancient water towers and drinking fountains were no longer good enough, and in 1882 a pumping...
A Prague underground system had been proposed as early as 1898 by the engineer Ladislav Rott, but it was only in 1926 that the first proper plan for a rapid transport system was drawn up by Vladimir List...
The first television signals in Prague were transmitted from Petřín Hill in 1953. By 1974, however, there was a clear need for a purpose-built high-power transmitter, and plans started to be drawn up for a replacement. The result,...
In 1722, the celebrated Prague architect Kilián Ignác Dientzenhofer purchased a plot of land formerly held by the Jesuits, where his patron Count Jan Václav Michna already owned a substantial garden. Over the course of the next three...
