New Town Hall (Prague)
The New Town Hall ( Novoměstská radnice ) in Prague is a historic building on Charles Square in Prague's New Town .
history
In a dominant location on the northeast corner of the cattle market, the New Town Hall ( Novoměstská radnice ) was built on a prominent terrain from 1367, at the latest after the renewed legal separation from Prague's Old Town in 1377, as a symbol of the independent royal town. The building was initially one-story with two wings, the east wing (built 1377-1398) to Vodičkova contained the offices and the prison, the south wing (built 1411-1418) to Karlsplatz representation and consultation rooms.
The first Prague lintel took place in this town hall on July 30, 1419 . Under the leadership of the Hussite preacher Jan Želivský , several thousand residents of Neustadt had moved to the town hall in a processional manner and had demanded the release of their Reformation prisoners. After a provocative response, they stormed the town hall, threw the Catholic (German) councilors and judges out of the window and stabbed or killed the survivors. This action marked the beginning of the fifteen-year Hussite Wars . King Wenceslas IV became so angry and afraid that he suffered a stroke, of which he died on August 16, 1419. In front of the town hall there is a bronze monument made by Jaroslava Lukešová in 1960, which commemorates Jan Želivsky.
A plaque on the facade facing Vodičkova honors imprisoned participants in the revolution in 1848 , three champions of the labor movement from 1879 and members of the Omladina youth in 1893.
Architecture and use
When the four Prague cities merged in 1784, the building became inoperable. From 1811 it served as a court and prison after renovation work in the Empire style , in which the gables were chipped off.
Today the basement rooms and the two-aisled columned hall on the ground floor from the first construction period have been preserved; the latter has served as a wedding hall since 1958 . In 1452–1456 the corner tower was added and in 1520–26 the south wing was redesigned in the Renaissance style, probably by Benedikt Ried . After a city fire in 1559, the town hall and tower were renewed in the Renaissance style and a four-wing complex with an arcade courtyard was created through additions to the west and north .
At the beginning of the 20th century, the adjacent complex of the justice building was built. During a first restoration in 1905/06, today's view with the three-gabled south side was reconstructed from around 1526.
Due to its urban development value and the cultural and political events, the Neustädter Rathaus was declared a national cultural monument.
Web links
- Emil von Förster : The construction of the criminal court building on Karlsplatz in Prague. In: Allgemeine Bauzeitung , year 1906, pp. 29–30 (online at ANNO ).
Individual evidence
Coordinates: 50 ° 4 ′ 41 ″ N , 14 ° 25 ′ 17 ″ E