Wiehlův dům (Praha) House

Wiehl's house is a Neo-Renaissance building located on the corner of Wenceslas Square and Vodičkova Street in Prague 1. The project was designed by an important architect Antonín Wiehl who built it in 1894-1896. The object is remarkable with rich painting decoration and using the concept of so-called talking architecture.

The house was built on a property that Wiehl purchased in 1894, and on it he had the original building demolished. The building was completed in 1896 and served the architect for housing and work. In the interior he kept extensive art collections, library and antiques. In the last years of his life he spent here sorting his collections and working on the documents for the Commission for the inventory of building, art and historical monuments of the royal capital of Prague.

It is a corner four-story house with 4 × 11 window axis spacing. The roof is saddled, decorated with shields, windscreens and a lid with a gallery on the ridge. The front of Vodičkov Street is equipped with a portal. The facade combines plaster, stucco and sandstone; in the outer axis of the second and fourth floors there is a bay connected to the balcony. The original layout included business premises on the ground floor, coffee shop on the first floor and other floors of apartments and offices.

The painting decoration of the facade is unique in Prague from the end of the 19th century with its scope. Whose theme and composition Wiehl himself designed. The ornamental part was realized by Josef Fanta and figure Mikolas Ales; The paintings themselves were performed by Láda Novák and A. Hofbauer with the assistance of František Urban and Wilhelm Trsek. The decoration uses motifs of the Czech Renaissance, including ornaments, cartouche, masks, herms, floral decoration, fruit festons and ribbons in Czech national colours. The upper parts show nude figures in the michelangelic postures and children with musical instruments.

In the decoration, Wiehl used a collection of short stories which he perceived as a bearer of humor, wisdom and morality. On the facade to Wenceslas Square, the allegory of virtue is displayed on the last floor, while in the shield on Vodickov Street we find amors, symbols of Day and Night and under the crown ledge masks War and Peace.

The central motive is two cycles from the life of a townsman, depicted as a buyer, scholar and defender of his city. The whole cycle is accompanied by the motto Life - pilgrimage to God. On the facade of Wenceslas Square are shown from left to right: a judge with a child over the scene of baptism, a student with a teacher, a half-naked girl with an apple over the picture of the fiancé and a townsman over the trader with accounts. The facade to Vodičkov Street is decorated by a knight above the scene of knighthood and an old man in a family circle with the character of Morana. The paintings are accompanied by folk sayings, such as the Tree, as it grows and stands or there is no root against the Sea.

Antonín Wiehl died in the house and was referred in his will by the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts. Since then the house belongs to this institution and its legal successors, the current Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. The building was declared a cultural monument on 3 May 1958 and is registered in the Central List of Cultural Monuments of the Czech Republic.

During the May uprising in 1945, the house was damaged by the German bombing of Wenceslas Square, which required repairs in the 1950s. The ground floor was modified during the construction of the underpass in Wenceslas Square in 1967- 1968. This created an arch in Vodickova Street and the house connected with the metro station Mostek. The original rustic ground floor replaced the tiles of polished stone. In 2016 there was extensive repair of facade, roof and interior.

Today, the house houses the Academia publishing house, which runs a representative bookstore of specialized literature on the ground floor and the first floor. The building is an important tourist destination, there is an information board on its front at Wenceslas Square.

Wiehl's house is one of the most exemplary examples of neo-Renaissance in Prague and represents a unique combination of architecture and painting. It's where the history of urban life meets the artistic visionaries of Antonín Wiehl. Visitors are advised to carefully study the details of the facade and its talking symbolism.