Architectural Posters of Prague

Prague Architecture from Old Town to the Castle

These six architectural posters lead from the medieval seat of power at Prague Castle to Old Town Square, where Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo façades form a richly layered cityscape. Individual monuments and continuous rows of houses reveal how Prague developed over many centuries.

AP 370 · Praha, Chrám sv. Mikuláše

St Nicholas Church on Old Town Square was built between 1732 and 1737 to designs by Kilián Ignác Dientzenhofer. Benedictine abbot Anselm Vlach financed the new building after a fire in 1689 had destroyed the earlier church. Bernardo Spinetti created the stucco work, Cosmas Damian Asam painted the frescoes and Antonín Braun supplied the sculptural decoration. The poster presents the animated Baroque façade, with its projecting centre, twin towers and layered roofscape, in a precise frontal elevation.

AP 549 and AP 003 · Praha, Katedrála sv. Víta

Charles IV began construction of the Gothic St Vitus Cathedral in 1344. Matthias of Arras and, after him, Peter Parler built the ring of chapels, choir, St Wenceslas Chapel, Golden Gate and parts of the Great South Tower. The Hussite Wars halted the work in 1419; construction resumed in Gothic Revival forms only in the nineteenth century, and the cathedral was completed in 1929. The long side elevation depicted on the poster clearly shows the relationship between its medieval fabric, later tower termination and Gothic Revival additions.

AP 366 and AP 001 · Praha, Staroměstská radnice

Prague’s Old Town Hall was established in 1338 as the seat of municipal government and gradually expanded by joining several burgher houses. Its 69.5-metre tower was completed in 1364, and the astronomical clock was installed in 1410. During the Prague Uprising in May 1945, the eastern and northern wings were destroyed and never rebuilt. The poster documents the surviving complex, including its Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and later elements, together with the celebrated astronomical clock.

AP 367 and AP 368 · Praha, Staroměstské náměstí

Old Town Square developed from the tenth century as a market at the crossing of European trade routes. The Town Hall and Church of Our Lady before Týn appeared in the fourteenth century; later additions included the Baroque Church of St Nicholas and the Rococo Kinský Palace. AP 367 concentrates on the monumental Týn Church and its neighbouring buildings. AP 368 instead assembles a long sequence of narrow burgher façades, showing how varied gables, colours and phases of rebuilding nevertheless create a coherent urban composition.

AP 369 · Praha Hrad, Zlatá ulička

Golden Lane developed in connection with the new northern fortifications of Prague Castle at the end of the fifteenth century. Castle marksmen, craftspeople, families and later artists lived in its small houses; Franz Kafka occupied number 22 during the First World War. The last residents left in 1953. The familiar façade colours owe much to designs made by artist Jiří Trnka in the 1950s. The poster’s panorama emphasizes the low, almost rhythmic sequence of the closely packed dwellings.