Historic Centre of Prague is the name under which the Prague Heritage Reservation was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The inscription took place on 14 December 1992 at the session of the World Heritage Committee in Santa Fe, New Mexico.[1]
Extent and boundaries
It is an urban whole comprising the Old Town, Josefov, the New Town, Malá Strana, Vyšehrad and Hradčany.[3] According to the National Heritage Institute, the Prague Heritage Reservation measures 894.94 hectares. The Institute calls it the largest urban reservation in the country and one of the largest in the world.[2] The World Heritage property consists of two parts: the Historic Centre of Prague within the boundaries of the reservation and Průhonice Park, that is, the château and park in Průhonice, which cover 211.42 hectares.[2]
Value and architecture
The inscription is justified by a unique panorama, the wealth of historic architecture and the preserved urban fabric.[1] According to the National Heritage Institute, the architecture of the core documents 1,100 years of the city's development and all architectural style periods are represented in it. According to it, Prague's architecture reached the peaks of European development in the Gothic, the Renaissance and the Baroque, and in the periods before and after the First World War. The medieval urban concept of the New Town of Prague has a special position.[2] The Institute lists as landmarks, for example, Prague Castle, Charles Bridge, the National Theatre and the Rudolfinum, joined by Cubist buildings, churches and monasteries.[3]
Protection and threats
As a signatory of the international convention on the protection of the world heritage, the Czech Republic committed itself to protect the centre.[1] At the beginning of the 1990s, according to the National Heritage Institute, the historic core bore the marks of forty years of communism and its building stock was in a condition that threatened the very existence of its values. In the following years, according to the Institute, it was possible to protect the core from major demolitions and to preserve its structure and a considerable authenticity of its buildings.[1]
According to the same text of 9 January 2023, the centre is threatened by the disruption of view horizons by tall buildings, oversized structures and additions, the infilling of courtyard blocks, the densification of development and the disruption of the roofscape. As examples it gives the tall buildings in Žižkov and Pankrác and new buildings in the New Town, among them Quadria, the completion of Hotel Evropa and Květinový dům near Wenceslas Square. According to the text, the new buildings Florentinum and Masaryk Centre 1 in the vicinity of Praha Masarykovo nádraží violated the urban structure.[1]
Another risk is traffic. Its intensity, after culminating at the turn of the millennium, returned to the values of the early 1990s, but regulation of individual car traffic in the centre itself was, according to the text, not tried. In 2010, by way of a reactive monitoring mission, UNESCO recommended reducing the requirements for the number of parking spaces in building regulations, which later happened; nevertheless, thousands of spaces were added in the centre over 30 years.[1]
Heritage fund of Prague
The Prague office of the National Heritage Institute looks after the heritage fund of the entire Capital City of Prague. Besides the reservation, Prague has two village heritage reservations (Stodůlky and Ruzyně), seven village heritage zones and eleven urban heritage zones. They protect, among other things, the development of Karlín, Vinohrady, Žižkov and Smíchov, or the garden district of Ořechovka. A buffer zone of the Prague Heritage Reservation is delimited around the protected areas.[2] According to the Institute, the fund includes 2,120 immovable cultural monuments, among them 41 national ones.[2]