Rudolfinum, Concert hall and cultural monument in Old Town, Prague.
The Rudolfinum is a neo-Renaissance concert hall and gallery on Jan Palach Square in Old Town, Prague. Its pale stone facade has a projecting central section above a wide staircase, five tall arched windows with columns between them, round medallions above, and a balustrade topped by 32 statues and flagpoles. Two bronze statues flank the stairs.
The Czech Savings Bank commissioned the building for its 50th anniversary and named it after Crown Prince Rudolf, who presided over the opening on 8 February 1885. Architects Josef Zítek and Josef Schulz completed the structure in 1881. From 1919 to 1939 it housed the Czechoslovak Chamber of Deputies, and Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk was elected president here in 1920 and 1927.
The building takes its name from Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, reflecting the connection between art and Habsburg representation in the 19th century. Visitors today experience classical concerts in a hall that continues to serve as home to the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.
Dvořák Hall seats 1,148 and is the main venue of the Prague Spring festival each May and June. The gallery at the rear of the building has around 1,500 square metres of temporary exhibition space and no permanent collection. The entrance faces Jan Palach Square on the Vltava's right bank in the Old Town.
The attic carries thirty-two statues: musicians on the south side, visual artists on the north, and not a single Czech among them. The best known is Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, whose statue Reinhard Heydrich ordered removed because of the composer's Jewish origin; it survived and returned after the war, a story Jiří Weil told in his book On the Roof is Mendelssohn.
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