The Houses in Husova Street

19-21 Husova St
Prague - Old Town

The Czech Museum of Fine Arts (formerly the Central Bohemian Gallery) is located in three historical buildings situated in the heart of the Prague municipal heritage reserve. The three houses it now occupies were originally built at the crossroads of old routes linking Prague Castle with Vyšehrad and Old Town Square with the Lesser Town Square over the river. At that time, these routes were part of an important long-distance road network along which Romanesque manors were built.

The centre of each manor was formed by living quarters with stone walls, with a central courtyard screened off from the main thoroughfare. The ground floors of these manors, which already had foundations below ground level from Romanesque times, later became the basements of Gothic houses when the level of the terrain began to be raised during the 13th century as the result of the construction of weirs and mills along the Vltava river. This was also the case with the central house of the three that are used today by the Czech Museum of Fine Arts.

the house 'U klíčů' (At the Keys),
also called 'U černého hada' (At the Black Snake)

The ground floor of the house that represented the core of the estate is set back slightly from the alignment of the present-day street and it has a complex layout. One entered the courtyard through a portal with a fine cross vault and along a narrow tunnel-vault passageway. One crossed the passageway, and though another portal one entered a large square hall whose four cross vaults are divided by prismatic bands and centred on a Romanesque column with a block capital, low shaft and a base with foliage decoration. The Romanesque hall has, on its north and south sides, a pair of longitudinal narrow windows with sills opening widely inside. In the Romanesque period, another portal was pierced through the passageway - this portal was simpler than the previous two. The Romanesque walls, made of marl limestone grouted with mortar rich in lime, are built with carefully worked, regular 12-25cm high cubic blocks set in rows.

The current entrance to the Romanesque area of the house is a later addition, leading through what was previously a small annexed Gothic cellar. Due to this, the outer face of the Romanesque stone wall is also visible; the wall below the Romanesque ground level is rough and irregular, while above it the stones are worked meticulously.

The two neighbouring houses are Gothic in origin. They were built in the area of the former Romanesque estate, and the first records of them date back to the second half of the 14th century. The corner house was the property of the goldsmith Grich in 1353. In another record dated 1362 the name is given as Graecus, 'the Greek'. His son, who followed in the family tradition, is mentioned in a record of 1382 by the name of Václav Krich. The history of the house is thus directly linked with the history of arts and crafts, namely the craft that was one of the most important during the medieval period. In addition, the origin of the owner of the house gives us an insight into the Prague milieu of the second half of the 14th century, whose art clearly featured the direct (and indirect) influence of Byzantium.

We know that the corner house was still braced at the beginning of the 18th century, since written records describe its dilapidated wooden structure. Its floors above ground level were practically rebuilt in 1830s, with the exception of the preserved Gothic reconstruction of the middle house that is all the more interesting. The supporting structure of this house, built using part of the former Romanesque structure, also divides the internal layout parallel and vertical to the face of the house, on the ground and first floors. The arcades are built of typical Gothic shaped bricks with a shaped groove on the edges of the arcades. The jointing of the walls with the semi-cross vault was rounded. After the second half of the 14th century the house was owned by shoemakers, cutlers and smiths, the last trade mentioned giving the house its name 'U klíčů' (At the Keys), used from 1458. Later on, the house was also called 'U černého hada' (At the Black Snake). The third house where Husova Street recedes from the street line near the house named 'U klíčů' and the house 'U zlaté slámy' (At the Golden Straw) was built in the Gothic period and led onto a narrow street which used to be the entrance to a Romanesque manor. Only the rear wing has been preserved in its original Gothic form.

The architectural development of all three houses continued, and records of this development may be found in the city's annals of the 15th and 16th centuries. In the 16th century all that remained were two decorated gables of the house 'U klíčů' whose articulated contours form semi- and quarter-arches. It is possible that these gables are even older, since a record about an increase in the price of the house dates back to the years 1571 - 1530.

In the 18th century the corner house was reconstructed (the house 'U zlaté slámy'). The finely shaped façades of this three-storey house are bound by pilasters up to the crown cornice. The house is notable for the medallions and stylised busts and heads. The portal of the former shops on the ground floor also dates back to that period. The small house bearing the number 229 and receding from the street line was preserved in its original form even after reconstruction in the second half of the 18th century. Of special interest is its small coustyard with cellars extending beneath its entire area. There is a staircase down to the cellar and up to the first floor in the narrow yard wing of the house with the masonry porch linking the rear house with the street wing. It may rightly be said that architects Zdeněk Kříž and Jiří Číla of the State Institute for the Reconstruction of Historical Towns and Buildings, who designed the reconstruction project, succeeded in their effort to preserve and restore the three buildings.

Romanesque cellar space, (c) Martin Majer, 2007

This was thanks to the administrators of the Municipal National Committee of Prague, the Regional National Committee of the Central Bohemia Region and the project's investor, the then Central Bohemian Art Gallery. The long years of work by Prague conservationists from the Department of Culture of the Prague Municipal National Committee, the Prague Centre of Historical Building and Nature Conservation, the Project Design Institute and the Prague construction company that realised the project have proved to be successful and fruitful. The numerous visitors who, since 1973, have visited the exhibitions held by the Central Bohemian Gallery and latterly the Czech Museum of Fine Arts can see for themselves that the period in which we are now living has enhanced the values created by our ancestors with its own contribution by turning these historical houses into a haven of the fine arts.