Sušárna a sklad chmele Vinzenze Zulegera Warehouse

Sušárna a sklad chmele Vinzenze Zulegera is an Art Nouveau industrial building located in Žatci on Kovářská Street and Smetana Square. This building from 1913 represents an important example of architecture for the needs of hop industry and is registered as a cultural monument within the territory of the Zátek hops Region.

The building was designed in January 1913 by architect Johann Salomon for Vincenzo Zuleger. The Zuleger family belonged to the most important German trade firms with hops in Žatec. The building was created as a warehouse and a steam oven, with its high-quality architectural solution allowing adequate integration into the city building.

The building is a three storey brick building with a mansard roof, built in a classicizing late Art Nouveau with a slightly baroque touch. Above the stone plinth, the facade on the ground floor is decorated with a quad, and on the first floor, it barefoot, while the windows are embedded behind the cheek and enclosed by the belt shampoo. The windows on the second and third floors are connected to vertical passports. The facade in the Mansard roof forms shields with simple shambles and baroque ripples. On the west side of the yard there is a factory chimney of circular section for the extraction of sulphur chambers. The interior has a hall character with a beam wooden structure, massive square columns with simply profiled saddles and belts and ceiling beams. The original technology of the oven and the sulphur chamber, including chain, tow, hopper and storage space, was preserved in the building. The partially underglazed structure of the cellar is encapsulated by brick-plated segments into metal I profiles.

After 1913, the building underwent several changes in ownership and functions. In 1933, the warehouse became the property of Josef Rott and Co., which reinforced the construction with reinforced reinforced concrete. In 1938, the builder Wilhelm Fuchs set up a new chimney in the courtyard ground floor annex. After February events in 1948, the building served as a national holding of the Hops Purchasing warehouse and was used for original purposes only around 2000. In 2016, the city of Žatec bought the building from the CHMELARSHIP team for CZK 2.4 million and was subsequently taken over by the Ústí Region. In 2019, the city of Žatec bought it back from the region.

The building was originally selected for the location of the gallery, which Petr Zeman and Eva Kunst donated to the Ústí Region. This collection contained about 1,500 works of modern art from authors such as Josef Čapek, Emil Filla, Otto Gutfreund, František Kupka, Kamil Lhota, František Muzika and Jan Redzavý, together with a collection of antique African and Nepal arts. However, due to the failure to fulfil some of the terms of the donation contract, this gallery has not been established in Žatci and since 2019 it has managed the collection of Kunsthalle Praha.

Since 5 September 2018 the entire complex has been listed in the Central List of Real Cultural Monuments of the Czech Republic. The object is an important part of the historical heritage of Žatce and a testimony about the importance of the hop industry in the region. It is advisable to visit it to understand industrial history and the architecture of the Art Nouveau period.