Elena Fialková: A Redefinition of the Prague CastleArtalk Revue 3 – Winter 20181

residence.2 The common typology is that of a presidential palace, for instance in Slovakia (Grassalkovich Palace), France (Élysée Palace), Hungary (Sándor Palace).3 The continuity of Czech history in connection with the castle hill is so strong that the idea of relocating the head of state outside the Prague Castle without a significant reason seems inadequate and not an option.4 However, what seems necessary after a hundred years of the republic is a redefinition of the complex to protect it from the mood swings of political periods and its administrators. This would support the city-forming character of the compound; a transformation from a fortified settlement to a city element.5

2 Elena Fialková, “Redefinícia Pražského hradu. Sídlo srdca” [The Seat of the Head. The Seat of the Heart] (diploma thesis, Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, Prague 2017/2018).

3 Comp. www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_palace, accessed Sep 19, 2018.

4 There are several examples of leaving the monarchist residence. For instance, Hungary left Budai Vár, the original seat of Hungarian kings, and the Hungarian president resides at the Sándor Palace (Sándor-palota in Hungarian) today. France left the Versailles and the president now resides at the Élysée Palace.

5 Jaroslav Vančura, Hradčany, Pražský hrad [Hradčany, the Prague Castle] (Prague: SNTL 1976), 2.

A Redefinition of the Prague Castle Elena Fialková

1. Introduction

From a Fortified Settlement to a City Element

“Here, besides today, overflowing with worries and hopes, we can embrace a thousand years of fame and pain, of times, influences and convictions meeting and passing, with our eyes and heart. We can read the drama of a small nation, exposed to all kinds of temptation and danger on the crossroad of European pressures, carved into stone.”1

V. V. Štech

The development of the Prague Castle has been a central motive in Czech history for more than a thousand years. In September 2016, when I started working on this text, it became the most controlled tourist object in the Czech Republic. Today, in September 2018, the restrictions remain, assuming a more material form, while the focus of the professional and general public on the closed nature of the Prague Castle towards the city, its relation towards society, and its meaning today is fading. This text was inspired by a study of presidential residences around the world which confirmed that it is very exceptional for a president of a democratic republic to live at a castle, a former monarchist

1 Václav V. Štech, Ovzduší Prahy [Prague’s Atmosphere], Czechoslovakia: Revue of the Ministry of Information, 13.

View from a studio at UMPRUM (Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague), 2014 Photo: the author’s archive

Elena Fialková: A Redefinition of the Prague CastleArtalk Revue 3 – Winter 20182

responsibly as to any other place on our planet.”7 The statement is provocative for its ambiguity. It offers a double perspective, a paradoxical view. A place like any other; on the other hand, the glorified Castle of the Czech nation. I focus on the phenomena constituting the identity of the Prague Castle. The phenomena

with the adjective paradoxical stand out to me the most, as they incorporate the opposite aspects of yin and yang, two contrary yet complementary parts, two magnetic poles which could lose their complementarity by mere rotation, between which there is a tension which both repels and complements.

The Prague Castle:On one hand an icon that is seen by many, seen many times, ubiquitous;on the other hand a protected, controlled district.

On one hand a castle belonging to all Czech citizens;on the other hand a compound full of international tourists.

On one hand a symbol of democracy and a presidential residence; on the other hand a historical seat of the monarchy and the highest authorities.

On one hand a compound in the city;on the other hand a museum monoculture without services for people – an open air museum.

And we could go on like that.Here are four architectonic reflections on the Prague Castle; issues associated by texts.

7 Josef Pleskot, “Dotýkati se hradu” [To Touch the Castle], Architekt, no. 10 (2002): 4.

Safe Democracy. A Matter of 21st Century Architecture

In the era of architect Plečnik, there was Masaryk’s founding democracy; in the era of President Havel, there was post-revolutionary

democracy. What will the Castle reify in the 21st century? I see an answer in the term safe democracy. We want to feel free and democratic. Translated into the language of the city: We want to live in the streets, go to the parks, discover hidden yards, meet in the squares, enter public buildings. At the same time, however, we also want to feel safe. On January 1, 2017, the Czech Ministry of the Interior established a new unit called The Centre against Terrorism and Hybrid Threats.6 However, it does not mention the impact its measures have on the operation of the city, houses, architecture, and what aesthetic it brings to public life. Seeing an army soldier or police officer at the entrance to the Prague Castle may signify a protective function to us, or symbolize justice. On the other hand though, it tells us that there can be danger, influences our movement, controls our entry, creates our first impression. How will the new kind of safe democracy show in architecture? Where is the boundary between freedom and safety? Is architecture one of the least valued aspects in a fearful society? If so, then security gates, checkpoints, entrances and traffic bans are a matter of 21st century architecture.

Paradoxical Phenomena

When asked what the Prague Castle means to him in 2002, architect Josef Pleskot replied: “To me, the Prague Castle as architecture is a place on the Earth to which I must relate as

6 Security Strategy of the Czech Republic, 2015. Accessible at: www.mzv.cz/public/2a/57/16/1375879_1259981_Security_Strategy_CZ_2015.pdf.

Elena Fialková: A Redefinition of the Prague CastleArtalk Revue 3 – Winter 20183

more than 7.4 million people in 2015.9 One could ask who and what do we protect? The president, the officials, the tourists? Besides people, we also protect social symbols. Architectonic icons. The disappearance of the Prague Castle would mean an erasure of a common identity.

“Prague was included in the World Heritage List, with a literal emphasis on the exceptional beauty and dramatic character of Prague’s panorama. The panoramic values are specified as one of the reasons why Prague has been listed.”10

Josef Štulc

The Castle is a symbol with changeable meanings. They have been changing and still are. They often even contradict each other. The interpretations are often based on wishes and illusions. The idea of the Castle tends to be stronger than its presidents. The Prague Castle today has become what André Malraux calls Lé musée imaginaire. It does not belong to Prague, Bohemia, or Europe. It dwells in timelessness with the pyramids, Capitol, Taj Mahal and Eiffel Tower – intact, motionless, eternal.11

The fact that the security question is currently addressed at the Castle is a response to the presence of terrorism in Europe, with the 9/11 events as a trigger. However, the question of security in the architecture of the Prague Castle has been addressed historically

9 Prague Castle Administration, Statistické šetření návštěvnosti na Pražském hradě [Statistical Research of Visitor Attendance at the Prague Castle] (Prague 2015).

10 Josef Štulc (head of ICOMOS – the Czech committee of UNESCO’s International Council of Monuments and Sites), “Panorama Prahy patří mezi chráněné hodnoty” [Prague’s panorama is among protected values], Czech Radio, Radio Prague, July 3, 2007, www.radio.cz/cz/rubrika/ocem/panorama-prahy-patri-mezi-chranene-hodnoty, accessed Jan 1, 2017.

11 Zdeněk Vašíček, “Editorial,” Architekt, no. 10 (2002): 2.

2. Architectonic Reflections on the Prague Castle

Reflection OneThe Disappearance of the Prague Castle

From my diary, November 10, 2014:In the morning, I take a photo of the Prague Castle from my

studio window8 in which it does not exist. This happens several times a year, during the fall and winter months. The morning fog is so dense that the Castle disappears from the panorama completely. It often makes me wonder whether it’s still there, or will be there tomorrow. The Little Quarter and nothing above it. Clouds meet the sky.

It’s 1902 and the bell tower at the Piazza San Marco in Venice collapses in front of the citizens. A symbol-sign disappears from the surface. What remains is a nothing. All Venetians are a little less Venetian. At that moment, it does not matter who did it and how.The fall of the Twin Towers from September 11, 2001 runs on screens in a constant loop. The giant and monumental construction was relatively easily erased from New York’s map. What remains is an uncertainty of more and more architectonic icons.Is there a similar sense of fear and helplessness related to the Prague Castle complex? A sudden loss of a national symbol provokes a sense of identity uncertainty which surrounds the entrance gates today. Prague is UNESCO listed for its panorama which would have almost no added iconic value without the castle skyline. Statistics show that the castle compound was entered by

8 In the school term 2014/2015, the author was at a study visit at the Ceramics and Porcelain Studio at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague which has views of the Castle.

Elena Fialková: A Redefinition of the Prague CastleArtalk Revue 3 – Winter 20184

Plečnik translated it into architectonic language by disrupting the monolithic inaccessibility of the castle.17 The monarchist residence became a residence of the republic.

Initiated by Václav Havel in 1990, the New Functional Use Scenario formulated ambitious goals: “The preceding prohibitions18 stifled life around the Castle. I suppose that the current political changes will create new conditions for the natural integration of the Castle within the city structure. The Castle will inspire life in its vicinity again.”19 In 2016, the author of these words, Professor Masák, recollects the “good old times” when everybody followed Havel’s lead and several clear architectonic gestures managed to incorporate the Castle as part of the city.20 Could these gestures have been more radical? How to architectonically cope with an area which needs to be controlled for security reasons, needs to maintain its representative character for political reasons, and needs a democratically functional program for societal reasons?

I perceive the current state as a parallel between the emperor’s island in Tokyo and the Prague Castle compound; we do not need to enter it and be part of it yet we perceive it visually on a daily basis as a landmark of the city, as a center around which the world of Prague revolves; although it is no longer impregnable in the sense of a monarchist residence, to many people, it is becoming an increasingly empty symbol.

One of the cures for the privatization of the castle compound is discussed by Hannah Arendt. She claims that a common world collapses due to the destruction of different views of the given phenomenon. These show the same thing within human plurality, making it last as something identical. The common symbol, the Castle, disappears if it is only seen from a single perspective, by a single type of observers. Any world only exists in the plurality of its perspectives. Nobody loses their own identity although everybody deals with the same thing.21 This statement is supported by the architectonic form of the Prague Castle. Seen from different perspectives by different people, it may seem of different size or grandeur, even the number of its towers may differ. Can the Castle be a meeting place of differences if it is mostly visited by tourists? All we have to do is not continue the monoculture of museums, galleries and activities of the Prague Castle Administration and establish a lively contact with the civil society which would give the Castle everydayness and Czech national awareness.

Reflection ThreeTourists and NONtourists

From my diary, September 3, 2016:It’s early September 2016. We’re standing in a line of about

800 people, it’s Sunday after lunch, we’re waiting to enter the Castle. Tourists behave in an organized way, many don’t even know that the checks are a novelty to the locals. They don’t comment on it. They don’t trash talk our president. They’re not too nervous. They’re waiting in line to get inside a historical site just like they did six months ago

17 Zdeněk Lukeš et al., Josip Plečnik – Architekt Pražského hradu [Josip Plečnik – Architect of the Prague Castle] (Prague: Správa Pražského hradu 1997), 43. Plečnik articulated democracy by using interior elements in the exterior and lowering the walls on the south side. His model was the antiquity – the mother of democracy.

18 The communist era severed Masaryk’s idea of the openness of the Prague Castle compound.

19 Miroslav Masák, Scénář nového funkčního využití [New Functional Use Scenario] (Prague 1990), 18.

20 From the author’s interview with M. Masák.

21 Hannah Arendt, Vita activa neboli O činném životě [The Human Condition] (Prague: Oikoymenh 2007), 76.

since the very beginning. The watchtowers and walls were the first architectonic tools of controlled movement.12 Extensive fortification works were done, such as building towers, gates and bridges, and digging moats.13 From the very beginning, the Hradčany promontory has had the natural conditions of a well defendable place. The walls lie on natural morphological foundations.14 The current castle guards are a nostalgic reminder of the Czechoslovak legions formed four years before the independent state was founded. People take selfies with them while they seem defenseless in their historical uniforms.

Today, in the information age, there are new technologies and software we do not even have to be aware of. How are the provisional checkpoints under wooden shelters to be justified in the 21st century though?

Reflection TwoAutism of the Prague Castle

From my diary, November 12, 2016:The castle compound has opening and closing hours, the

entrances are controlled by security metal detectors and police officers, its streets are not defined as public space in the city structure, its courtyards are not managed by the Prague Institute of Planning and Development and its Public Space Department, mass is not celebrated in the compound churches if there is an important state visit. All of these factors divide the space from the aura of journeys, both physical and emotional, which it continues. They point out the non-public character of the spaces in the interior of the castle compound; which can evoke a ghetto, a district. A pedestrian learns about the autism of the area.

The psychological dictionary defines autism as social isolation, egocentric thinking, withdrawal. According to E. Bleuler, it is a disorder of the relation to reality; the thinking of an autistic person is focused exclusively on personal needs, their communication is deficient, there is a tendency towards self-destructive behavior.15 In accordance with the definition of autism, supporting the isolation of the Prague Castle means creating the risk of self-destruction. Separating it from reality means creating a world behind a wall on the map; encircled emptiness.

One of the two most powerful places of the modern world, Tokyo, is the seat of the emperor whose residence is surrounded by an inaccessible ring of walls, bodies of water, roofs and trees, and its very center is but an evaporated idea for the local citizens.16

The fact that the Prague Castle has been surrounded by walls for thousands of years only changed in 1918. Masaryk’s assignment was to make it into a “democratic castle.”

12 Pavel Vlček, Umělecké památky Prahy 4 [Prague’s Art Monuments 4] (Prague: Academia 2000), 149. The most renowned towers included: The White Tower with a gate which housed a state prison for two centuries. It is one of the most massive fortification towers in the Czech Republic. Mihulka from the 12the century built under the rule of Sobeslav; in the 16th century, it served as a secret arsenal laboratory and was largely damaged by an explosion due to experimentation. The Black Tower used to be a prison of the burgrave’s office with an execution ground right in front of it. Now no longer existing Old Trumpeters’ Tower (which can still be seen in Prague’s panorama from 1679) was connected with the Castle by a passageway.

13 Vančura, Hradčany, Pražský hrad [Hradčany, the Prague Castle], 221.

14 Ivan Borkovský, Pražský hrad v době přemyslovských knížat [The Prague Castle at the Time of Premyslid Princes] (Prague: Academia 1969), 18.

15 Pavel Hartl – Helena Hartlová, Psychologický slovník [Psychological Dictionary] (Prague: Portál 2015), 63.

16 Roland Barthes, Říše znaku [Empire of Signs] (Prague: Fra 2013), 58. The Japanese emperor resides at an island which can be visited by common citizens twice a year: on New Year’s Eve and on the emperor’s birthday.

Elena Fialková: A Redefinition of the Prague CastleArtalk Revue 3 – Winter 20185

Another unique house was the House of Czechoslovak Victims28 which was rebuilt in 1960–1963 from the old burgrave’s house. 30 years ago, children from far and wide would still come there to play Ludo, watch a theater performance or get a tour of the Castle with a guide of their age.29

This symbiotic relationship between international tourists and Czech locals is a matter of the past now. It makes no sense to visit the Castle, unless you are an employee of the Prague Castle Administration or you feel like lining up and refreshing the historical postcards as a tourist. One longs to become a NONtourist, be a patriot, be proud of our nation, be part of something; not an observer, not a tourist. There is very little that the Castle has to offer to the city inhabitants; it is no longer a locale for the polis.

Reflection FourThe Importance of the First Touch

From my diary, March 4, 2017:I guess it’s not the checks as such that bothers me. I guess

it’s not the imaginary tension and fear that bothers me. However, as an architect, I find it hard to cope with the temporary shelters in front of the castle gates and the glass parasites on historical houses from which I am observed by someone.

When I was waiting in line for the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, I could not understand why we were entering it from a provisional wooden bridge suspended in the air. The locals told me that Israel does not want us to enter the Palestinian territory in a dignified way. It is deliberately done that way so that the entrance seems temporary even for dozens of years. It somewhat reminds me of the current situation of the controlled shelters at the Prague Castle; I only have to ask, who is the enemy here?

All security checks take place at the entrance to the compound, which is an important moment both from the architectural and the psychological perspective. The entrance as an archetype of the first touch; the entrance as a gate, a passage; the visitor and the architecture shaking hands. Like they teach as at kindergarten: “Be nice and say hi!” The importance of the first impression.

Manipulated and controlled movement, which forces us to use different entrances and exits than those that are architectonically and urbanistically logical and historically relevant in public space, is yet another result and threat of the newly introduced checks at the castle compound. It causes a degradation of the urbanistic solution of the compound. Historically, the Castle had several entrances and each was specific for its architectonic qualities, type of use, scene it worked with.

Even the very act of arriving had its significance due to its confirmation by matter – the gate, the opening. I find that the value that a dignified entry to the Prague Castle could have does not exclude the values of democracy and the need for safety. It is a newly defined task.

A typical example is the first courtyard, architectonically termed as open arms,30 an embrace, two extended arms, that paradoxically cannot be entered today. As of today, the area behind the gate signals that it is under the baton of political power, including the EXIT sign. The gate from the times of Maria Theresa separates

28 For more on this phenomenon, see the dissertation thesis of Veronika Rollová, “Pražský hrad jako nástroj propagandy v letech 1948–1989” [The Prague Castle as a Tool of Propaganda in the Years 1948–1989] (dissertation thesis, Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, Prague 2017).

29 Vančura, Hradčany, Pražský hrad [Hradčany, the Prague Castle], 183.

30 Ibidem, 42.

for the Eiffel Tower in Paris and one year ago for the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. To them, the security check is a guarantee of a slight yet intrinsic satisfaction that if something really were to happen, the soldiers are near. A tourist has a right for safety.

In our postmodern times, all of us are tourists in a way, we all experience holidays and vacations. The world is here to serve our collectors’ impressions. Bauman’s Reflections on Postmodern Times mention one of the four personality types characteristic of the contemporary life style: “the tourist.” “The tourist devours the world without being devoured by it; they appropriate it without being appropriated by it.”22 They do not show responsibility towards the local inhabitants, towards the local environment; they want to see an authentic environment but do not partake in it. They feel free because they have money and a home they can return to somewhere in the world. Local citizens (Prague inhabitants in this case) are lined up on their route, ready to accommodate them.23 We observe that in a city we identify as our home, we long not to be tourists ourselves. We perceive the Prague Castle as the symbol of our homeland. However, this sentence is deprived of its meaning if it is a mere definition; an abstraction outside our real experience, which we do not need, which is full of international tourists.

The unprecedented increase of tourism in the Czechoslovak period placed increasing demands on the main target of international guests, on the most significant tourist attraction; the Prague Castle, the Hradčany area. Spaces and rooms at the Prague Castle were opened to the tourists as circumstances allowed and included in several visitor circuits.

Today, we are aware of the economic and social interdependence between tourism and cultural sites; the conditionedness of the mutual relation between tourism and culture, with tourism acting not only as part of the cultural system but also as a tool stimulating the cultural environment.24

What is paradoxical though is that in the 1960s, the Castle was still a home to “common” people. We have numbers to prove that since the Industrial Revolution, there has been a gradual transformation of the primarily residential character of the Hradčany area towards a highly commercial function. The commercialization trend was under way very gradually already in the socialist era and culminated in the 1990s in connection with the political and economic changes. During 120 years of the city center development, the number of inhabitants dropped by 85 000.25

For instance, the Golden Lane is now a paid museum. Bizarrely, one has to buy a ticket and pass through a turnstile to enter the street. Once it was a lively lane.26 Franz Kafka lived in House No. 22 in 1916–1917, writers and poets František Halas, Jaroslav Seifert and Vítězslav Nezval27 would meet in House No. 12. By 1953, the little houses were purchased from their owners by the Office of the President of the Republic, professionally renovated and restored.

22 Zygmunt Bauman, Úvahy o postmoderní době [Reflections on Postmodern Times] (Prague: SLON 2006), 49–53.

23 Ibidem.

24 Ladislav Lenovský, “Cestovný ruch ako kulturologický fenomén” [Tourism as a Culturological Phenomenon], Kontexty kultúry a turizmu, no. 1 (2008): 17–22.

25 Martin Ouředníček – Jana Temelová, Socioekonomická analýza území MČ P1 [Socioeconomic Analysis of Prague 1 District] (Prague 2008).

26 Václav Karlů, Povídky ze Zlaté uličky [Short Stories from the Golden Lane] (Prague: Politika 1940).

27 Comp. www.radio.cz/cz/rubrika/cestujeme/zlata-ulicka, accessed Sep 1, 2017.

Elena Fialková: A Redefinition of the Prague CastleArtalk Revue 3 – Winter 20186

Elena Fialková is an architect who finished her graduate studies at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in 2017. Her diploma project A Redefinition of the Prague Castle explored the meaning of the current presidential residence, the accessibility of the Prague Castle within the city, the democratic content of the institution and the phenomenon of security at the time of terrorist threats. The project was awarded by the Czech Chamber of Architects and by Hlávka Foundation. Currently she is a postgraduate student at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague in the studio of Roman Brychta. In her dissertation thesis Architecture and Democracy of the 21st Century, she examines the relation between architecture and politics on the examples of representative buildings and their significance in a city’s urban planning. Her thesis is mainly inspired by the crisis of democracy in the 21st century and by the development of Czech Republic after the fall of communism in the context of Europe.

the area from Hradčanské Square in vain today. The excessive pathos does not correspond to the seat of a democratic ruler, an approachable representative of the state. What should the entrance sites look like and how accessible should this area be to meet the security requirements of the 21st century?

3. Conclusion

The Prague pedestrian31 is dependent on the connecting lines between places, on latitude differences, on permeability, on the readability of the environment. The compound is an environment with a specific regime within the city. The text points out the danger of autism towards the city, the illegibility of edges, the provocativeness of provisional solutions and a reflection on what the Prague Castle represents.

The definition of the Prague Castle should be redefined: from a fortified settlement to a city element, no longer a fortress but a structure connected to the city. This requires a change of the authority of the Castle’s main administrator: the president, and his clearly delimited field of action.32

The royal court was once the center of the city. It was also an important cultural center and a mover of the society.33 I suggest interweaving the Castle with functions representing the civil society. No longer a royal court but a democratic court. Inhabited, used. A city element. In the middle of the country. An inspiring beating heart,34 a life-giving pulse stirring the better in us. Bohemian fields and groves would thrive.35

Let the Golden Lane be a street! Turnpikes belong to ski slopes. Houses are not soulless facades. In such a case, content would lose its meaning and form would only be a gravestone to times past.

Let kitsch be replaced by authentic life of democratic courts! As an impression of a social structure, as a symbol of the fact that the Prague Castle belongs to every citizen of the Czech Republic; who, however metaphorically, has the right for it. Let the space of a single person become a symbol of all of us.

Translated from Slovak by Tereza Chocholová.

31 In reference to Vítězslav Nezval’s book Pražský chodec [The Prague Pedestrian] with photographs by Josef Sudek. According to M. Kořená, it is “a poetic diary driven by an exalted feeling of urgent beauty of all that one can see when walking around Prague.”

32 In her diploma project, the author suggests that the president administers the buildings in the second courtyard ring while the rest of the Prague Castle compound is left to the city. The project is accessible at www.umprum.cz/web/cs/architektura/architektura-iv/elena-fialkova-1526.

33 Jan Otto, Ottův slovník naučný [Otto’s Encyclopaedia] (Prague: J. Otto 1894), 270.

34 A Heart for Václav Havel is a heart-shaped sculpture made by Lukáš Gavlovský and Roman Švejda. It is made of remains of candles that had to be removed from commemoration sites across the Czech Republic in December 2011 and January 2012.

35 Bedřich Smetana’s symphonic poem From Bohemian Fields and Groves from the My Homeland cycle was composed in 1875. The composer himself writes about it: “Everyone can picture moments in the composition as they like; a poet’s way is free, although there are composition details to follow.”