Týn 639/1: Granovský Palace
The area bounded by the churches of St James the Greater and Our Lady before Týn is one of the most well-preserved mediaeval public spaces in Europe. A significant trading place since at least the...
Tagged: Prague 1
Hybernská 1001/10: Hotel Central
The construction of Prague’s ‘Hotel Central’ began in 1898. The work of three architects — Bedřich (Friedrich) Ohmann, Bedřich Bendelmayer, and Alois Dryák — it was built by the firm of Quido Bělský, whose name...
Czernin Palace / Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Humprecht Jan Černín (Czernin, in the usual German spelling) came from one of Bohemia’s wealthiest families, their fortunes enriched still further by the Catholic victory in the Thirty Years’ War. His great-uncle had served at...
Újezd 450/40 Michna Palace (Tyrš House)
This sumptuous late renaissance structure in Prague’s Malá Strana district was developed from a property owned by the Kinsky family. After 1623, on the instructions of the new owner Pavel Michna of Vacínov, it was...
Sova’s Mills / Museum Kampa
The banks of the Vltava contain a rich heritage of industrial architecture, from water towers to breweries, from weirs to watermills. The island known since the 18th century as ‘Kampa’ (possibly from its use as...
Convent of Saint Agnes
The earliest gothic building in Prague, the Convent of Saint Agnes was constructed in 1231 on a riverside plot later known as ‘Na Františku’ (St Francis’s). The site had been donated by King Wenceslas I...
Můstek (Little Bridge)
Embedded in a wall of the vestibule of Můstek metro at the northern end of Wenceslas Square is the little bridge (‘můstek’) that gives the underground station its name. The marlstone bridge, constructed in the...
Národní 1009/3: Czech Academy of Sciences
Of all the work of Vojtěch Ignác Ullmann, perhaps the most outstanding is the building that today houses the Czech Academy of Sciences (Akademie věd). Ullmann’s grand neo-renaissance plan saw off competition from a large...
Prague Loreto
According to legend, in order to keep it safe from the hands of the infidel, the simple house in which the Virgin Mary is supposed to have lived was transported from Nazareth by divine intervention....
National Museum
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...
