Budova Českého rozhlasu Building

Budova Českého rozhlasu on Vinohradská street number 12 in Prague is one of the most important places in Czech media and political history. It was built between 1929 and 1931 according to the design of architect Bohumil Sláma. It was originally intended for the Post and Telegraph Directorate and also for the Czechoslovak Radio, which started its activities here on 10 December 1933. Around 1935, the building became fully owned by the Czechoslovak Radio.

However, the history of broadcasting in Prague has deeper roots. Czechoslovak radio, known as Radiomournal, started a regular broadcast on May 18, 1923 from a tent near Kbelí Airport. The following ten years the broadcast gradually moved - from Kbel to Khlubětín and back to Kbel, in 1924 to Postage Shopping on Fochov Street (today Vinohradská Street) number 58, in 1925 to Orbís on Fochov Street number 62, and since 1927 from the National House on Peace Square. From there it was broadcast until 1933 when the radio finally moved into a new building in Vinohrady.

The building has forever entered the Czech memory as the place of the beginning of the Prague uprising. On May 5, 1945, at 6 a.m., radio workers began to broadcast exclusively Czech and played banned Czech songs - and the rebellion started with this act. German SS troops responded immediately by attacking the building. There were approximately 90 soldiers from Waffen SS, but Czech police officers and rebels came to defend the radio. During the fighting, German soldiers were lost in the building because the workers removed all German inscriptions. The struggles were intensely conducted by each room and every meter of space. After 18 hours of hard fights, the German unit surrendered. But the day after that, the occupants tried to reoccupy or destroy the building. They deployed tanks and fired from a special armored train at the Central Station. On the evening after 6 May, Messerschmitt Me 262 dropped a quarter-ton bomb on the main building, which completely destroyed the entrance hall, adjacent rooms and broadcasting technology. But the radio did not shut down - the workers immediately continued from the provisional study at the Hus Choir. On 7 May, the Germans re-launched an air raid, but it failed. The fighting ended on 9 May when the Red Army entered Prague. On the same night at 7:05 p.m., the broadcast from the original building in Vinohrady was festively restored.

After the war the building was repaired and completed according to the design of architect Karl Tausenau. Another building was also created in Balbino Street, which formally follows the architecture of Slám.

The building experienced a dramatic moment more than 20 years later. On the night of August 20 to August 21, 1968, when the Warsaw Treaty troops launched an invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Czechoslovak Radio became one of the first targets of the occupants - it was broadcasting an unbiased news of the invasion and calling on the people to calm and quiet resistance. There were clashes outside the building around 7 a.m. About 7:30 a.m., six tanks arrived at the building. A barricade made up of several hundred people, the occupants tried to break through. Dozens of missiles hit the building, Antony's planes flying over the building. Before nine o'clock, the neighborhood was burned - shot-up cars and damaged plaster from buildings. The occupation tank crashed into a barricade made up of a truck; The crash created a fire.

The building has been protected as a memory since 1976. On 23 November 2019, the Government of the Czech Republic declared it a national cultural monument, officially recognising its irreplaceable contribution to the Czech history of the twentieth century.