The Trade Fair Palace (Veletržní palác) is a functionalist building on Dukelských hrdinů Street in Prague's Holešovice. It was built in 1925–1928 by the architects Josef Fuchs and Oldřich Tyl for the Prague Sample Fairs company and at the time was the largest building of its kind in the world.[2] Since 1976 the palace has belonged to the National Gallery Prague, which shows its collections of modern and contemporary art there.[2][1]*
Origins
The architectural competition was announced in 1924. It envisaged a business quarter on the pattern of London, Hamburg or Berlin with two trade fair palaces, an office building and a hotel.[1] Only one palace was built.[5] Oldřich Tyl's symmetrical design was reworked in the second round together with Josef Fuchs into an asymmetrical form with horizontal ribbon windows and a reinforced concrete frame.[1] The ceremonial opening in September 1928 marked the tenth anniversary of Czechoslovakia; Alfons Mucha's Slav Epic was displayed in the Great Hall at the time.[1]
The building
The building occupies an entire city block. It is 130 m long and 70 m wide, has nine storeys above ground and two below, and a facade of artificial stone.[1] The Heritage Catalogue of the National Heritage Institute describes facades composed of block-like volumes with different surface treatments; the main facade on Dukelských hrdinů Street is formed by a four-storey band of uninterrupted ribbon windows that projects from the face of the building above the second floor.[4] Inside there are two halls. The Great Hall in the south, 1,750 m² in area and 15 m high with a sawtooth roof and crane tracks, was used to exhibit machinery.[1] The Small Hall in the north is about 31 m high and surrounded by six floors of open galleries.[1] The basement housed the Bio Favorit cinema, later the Veletrhy cinema.[1][4]
Trade fairs and foreign trade companies
Until 1941 the palace hosted 26 spring and autumn international trade fairs. In 1934–1938 the Prague fairs ranked in importance behind Leipzig and London, and a single fair usually drew around half a million visitors to the palace.[1] During the occupation the building was seized by the German authorities.[5] After the war fairs were held in 1946–1951; the last, the 52nd fair in 1951, was decorated in the spirit of socialist realism.[1] The palace then served as the head office of foreign trade companies, among them Kovo, Centrotex and Motokov, and the ground floor housed Tuzex shops.[1]
Fire and restoration
The fire was reported in the early evening of 14 August 1974. It started in a paint shop on the fourth floor through spontaneous combustion of varnish and spread through the passages and lift shafts.[3][1] 25 fire units took part and 600 people were evacuated from the cinema. The fire was declared extinguished on 20 August.[3][1] Only the reinforced concrete frame remained, and the damage amounted to 220 million.[3] There were calls for demolition, but the authorities decided to restore the building.[3] The reconstruction was designed by Stavoprojekt Liberec (SIAL) under Karel Hubáček, with Miroslav Masák as chief architect. It preserved the spatial arrangement of the building, the articulation of the facades and the ratio of glazed to solid surfaces.[1] The first stage was completed in 1993, three floors with the permanent exhibition opened to the public in 1995, and the entire exhibition space was finished in 2000.[3] The gallery has approximately 22,000 m² of exhibition space in the palace.[1]
Pages linking here
Sources
- Městská část Praha 7 —
- Národní galerie Praha — 12 June 2026
- Národní galerie Praha — 12 April 2026
- Národní památkový ústav, Památkový katalog
- Městská část Praha 7