Týnská school, School building in Old Town, Prague, Czech Republic

Týnská school is a two-house complex at Old Town Square 14, on the corner of Týnská Street, facing the Church of Our Lady before Týn. It has medieval cellars and ground floor, an arcade with pointed arches and cross vaults, and a Renaissance facade with two symmetrical stepped gables topped by ball ornaments. A Baroque fresco of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary from the 18th century sits between the third-floor windows.

Cellars point to a house founded in the 13th century, first documented in 1359 and 1363. After 1381 it housed a burgomaster who helped capture King Wenceslaus IV, so in 1394 the king turned the house into a Latin school, which ran until the first third of the 19th century. In 1842 the school moved to the former Minorite monastery by St James, and the vacated rooms became flats.

The house is named after the Týn parish and its school, where Latin was taught and where the humanist Marek Bydžovský z Florentina taught between 1560 and 1581. The builder Matěj Rejsek, who died around 1506, called himself a bachelor of the Týn school. A baroque fresco of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary from the 18th century fills the centre of the upper facade.

The double house stands at Old Town Square 14, on the corner of Týnská Street 2, facing the Church of Our Lady before Týn. A passageway through the building leads into the courtyard, where remnants of sgraffito with Latin inscriptions were uncovered on the rear facades.

The two houses were joined into a single building, no. 604/I, and its medieval cellars date to the 13th century. In the courtyard facades, remnants of sgraffito with Latin Renaissance inscriptions were uncovered.