History

Welcome to the New Town Hall, which was reopened to the public in June 1995 after reconstruction lasting over twenty years.
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 l348, when Charles IV was pursuing a grand-scale prograrnme of town-planning in accordance with his conceptions 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 arrned 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 from Cimperk, and a chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Wenceslas. It was not unti1 1559 that the Town Hal1 began to take on the appearance we are farniliar 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 Rudolph II to issue an Imperial Charter quaranteeing reliqious freedom. The building also served as a prison for a considerable length of time. The 1eader of the Chodov peasant uprising, Jan Sladký-Kozina, awaited sentence here in 1694-1695. Executions have taken place in the Town HalI'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 Hal1 until the beginning of this century. The most significant po1itical 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 walIs. After a fire in 1559, the original Gothic vaulted ceiling, the remains of the 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 galIery.
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 partially survived. In the Great Hall, fragments of mannerisitic murals from the sixteenth century have been preserved.

The borough council of Prague 2, under whose charge the most recent restoration took place, is keen to use the building for cultural and social purposes which keep in line with its historic significance. We would be glad to be able to welcome you to these events.