Civil Ceremonies
OLD TOWN HALL OF PRAGUE
After King John of Luxembourg accorded the citizens of Prague the privilege of having their own district council in 1338, they decided to build a Town Hall, paid for by a duty levied on wine. The almost 70 meters high tower was completed in 1364. Due to continuous expansions, the building now is a colorful collection of gothic and renaissance-style façades. During the 2nd WW, the building was severely damaged when the nazis suppressed the Prague uprising, but it is now thoroughly restored.
The first clock of the Town Hall dates back to the beginning of the 15th century. Clock maker Hanuš, who perfectioned the construction in 1490 was - according to the legend - made blind by the city council to prevent him from making a more beautiful clock elsewhere. Most of the mechanism still used today is made by Jan Táborský between 1552 and 1572.
The clock is a magnet for tourists, especially just before the hour, when the twelve apostles march past. The skeleton on the right, depicting Death, starts the show by pulling on a string. In the meantime he looks at his other hand, in which he holds an hourglass. Then, two windows open, from where the apostles march. After the ritual, a cock crows. Other figures symbolize vanity, heathenism and parsimony.
Below the apostles is the astronomical clock, which has the earth in the middle of the universe. The clock was created to show the presumed rotation of the sun and the moon around the earth. The clock also shows the movement of the sun and the moon in relation to the signs of zodiac. Below the astronomical clock is a calendar. The calendar, built by Josef Mánes in 1866, shows the days of the year together with symbolic pictures of the months of the year.
THE NEW TOWN HALL OF PRAGUE
The construction of the New Town Hall, one of eighteen national cultural monuments in Prague, was begun shortly after the founding of Prague´s New Town in 1348, when Charles IV was pursuing a grand-scale programme of town-planning in accordance with his conception of the future of the Holy Roman Empire, which was to expand eastwards with Prague as the capital. In 1419 the New Town Hall became the stage for the first armed clash between the Catholics and Utraquists, marking the beginning of the Hussite Revolution. A procession, led by the Hussite preacher Jan Želivský and Jan Žižka, came to a stop in front of the Town Hall and demanded the release of followers who had been imprisoned there. When answered with stones,the crowd forced its way inside and hurled the burgomaster, two councillors and several burghers from the windows onto the lances and halberds of the Hussites below. Those who survived the fall were then finished off on the ground.
1456 saw the completion of the Town Hall´s tower, which was later installed with bells, cast by Brikcí z Cimperka, and a chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Wenceslas. It was not until 1559 that the Town Hall began to take on the appearance we are familiar with today, with its Characteristic Renaissance gables and, completing the facade of the south wing, the inwrought stone portal. The Town Hall was not just an administrative centre for the New Town. Protestants gathered here in 1609 in an attempt to induce Emperor Rudoplh II to issue an Imperial Charter quaranteeing reliqious freedom. The building also served as a prison for a considerable lenght of time. The leader of the Chodov peasant uprising, Jan Sladký-Kozina, awaited sentence here in 1694-1695. Execution have taken place in the Town Hall´s courtyard, most recently during the Nazi occupation.
The New Town Council was dissolved in 1784 after Joseph II ordered the unification of the Prague boroughs, and the Town Hall became a Provincial High Court. Assizes were held in the Great Hall until the beginning of this century. The most significant poitical trial to take place here was that of members of Omladina in 1894. Seventy people, on the most part from the ranks of radical students, were convicted on the basis of trumped-up charges. Alois Rašín and Stanislav Kostka Neumann were among those tried.
You have entered the most prominent part of the Town Hall, the tower. It is 42 metres high, and was built in such a way as to have a view reaching to the City walls. After a fire in 1559, the original Gothic vaulted ceilingm, the remains of ghe brackets of which can still be seen, and the Gothic windows of the lower floors were replaced with rectangular windows with Renaissance jambs. The foot of the tower is 203.65 meters above sea-level, the gallery 246.44 meters and the uppermost point of the tower 272 meters. 221 steps lead up to the tower gallery. The columned entrance hall can be seen through the glass part of the now walled-up carriage entrance, which is by the admissions desk. This hall is largest preserved space for non-religious purposes built in Bohemia in the High Gothic period.
The chapel, originally Gothic, was constructed after the appointment of the Catholic borough council in 1622. It was later rebuilt in the baroque style. The surbase stone entrance portal by the staircase and the new vault also date back to this time. On the west wall, there is a marble plaque commemorating the restoration of the chapel in 1891. In the centre of the south wall there is a wooden baroque altar. A smaller painting of Our Lady from the east side, a painting of St George, and two wooden sculptures of saints are presently in the care of the City of Prague Museum. Marble squares make up the stone paving. The decoratively wrought grille partitioning the pulpit off from the presbytery has only partioally survived. In the Great Hall, fragments of mannerisitic murals from the sixteenth century have been preserved.
CHATEAU LIBEŇ
The small Renaissance chateau was built at the end of the 16th century. In 1608, when the chateau was owned by the Cernahus family, Emperor Rudolph II and his brother Mathias concluded the peace treaty there. After the Battle fo White Mountain in 1621 the property was confiscated and then it changed ownership several times. In 1651 the new owner of the Chateau Libeň, the Nostic family, had it enlarged and rebuilt in the Baroque style. In 1662 the property was bought by the Old Town of Prague, and 220 years later, the chateau became a favourite summer residence of Prague Mayors. In 1757, during the Prusian invasion, the chateau was seriously damaged. The architect Jan Josef Prachner recontructed it in the Rococo style between 1769-70.
The chateau got a new wing, a little steeple, and a chapel. During the following years, many kings visited the Chateau in Libeň. Empress Marie Therese stayed there each year between 1770-77. In 1786 Emperor Joseph II and at the turn of 1803-4 Emperor Francis I were also accommodated in the chateau. In August 1791 Emperor Leopold II spent the night there before the ceremony of crowning him a Czech King.
On 12 September 1901 an affiliation to Prague was declared in the front wing. The chateau has been the seat of the head office of municipal authorities in Prague 8 ever since. The chateau is a remarkable example of the Rococo style. Original frescoes and ceiling paintings of Jakub Obrovský in the marriage ceremony hall make it very popular in Prague. The chapel of the Immaculate Conception of Virgin Mary decorated by Ignác Raab served as a Catholic church in Libeň until the beginning of the twentieth century.
Since 1993 regular spring and autumn concert cycles, in 1995 joined by the music festival Youth Libeň Spring, which is held paralelly with the International Music Festival Prague Spring, have been taking place here.