Ten centuries of European architecture & heritage
The completion in 1891 of the new museum at the top of Wenceslas Square was the crowning achievement of the Czech National Revival, a statement of nationhood that anticipated by thirty years the founding of...
In 1887, a small group of Czech artists and writers came together to found the Mánes Society of Fine Arts. In the context of their country’s desire to break away from the Austro-Hungarian empire, ‘S.V.U....
Halfway along the impressive southern rampart of Prague Castle stands the Ludvík wing, a five-storey bastion built between 1503 and 1509 and named after Ludvík Jagellonský, ruler of Bohemia from 1516 to 1526. Its architect,...
A stone’s throw from the east end of the Cathedral of Saint Vitus stands the smaller but no less significant Basilica of Saint George (Bazilika svatého Jiří). Founded in 920 by Duke Vratislav I, the...
Visitors to Prague cannot fail to be struck by the number of monuments and locations that bear the name ‘Charles’. They include the city’s mediaeval university, its largest public square, and of course its magnificent...
The 14th-century church of Saint Stephen was one of two ecclesiastical foundations built specifically to serve the parish of Charles IV’s New Town. Construction took place between 1351 and 1392, close to the existing rotunda...
Alongside the refurbished barracks that now form the Palladium shopping centre in Prague’s New Town sits the unassuming single-gabled church of St Joseph. It was built between 1636 and 1653 by Melichar Mayer for the...
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...
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...
This landmark tower at the lower end of Wenceslas Square was designed by the architects Antonín Pfeiffer and Matěj Blecha and constructed between 1912 and 1914 on the site of the former Vienna Cafe. Typically...
