Platýz, Renaissance palace in Old Town, Czech Republic

Platýz is a palace in Prague's Old Town featuring four wings arranged around a spacious inner courtyard with multiple street-level entrances. The building blends Gothic foundations with Renaissance design and now contains shops, restaurants, and cafes throughout its connected spaces and passages.

Three houses stood on the site until 1347, when Frederick of Burgundy, a member of Charles IV's court, built a palace 'like a castle with a high tower', as Václav Hájek z Libočan's chronicle describes it. In 1405 it passed to Prague entrepreneur Jan Bradatý ze Stříbra, and in 1408 a disputation on the correct reading of Wycliffe's writings was held here. In 1586 imperial councillor Jan Platais (Platejs) of Plattenštejn, secretary to Rudolf II, bought it, gave it a Renaissance facade and added a first-floor courtyard loggia, small parts of which survive.

The palace is named after Jan Platais (Platejs) of Plattenštejn, imperial councillor and secretary to Rudolf II, who bought it in 1586 and had its facade reworked in Renaissance style. His son Jan Arnošt, canon and later Bishop of Olomouc, obtained permission to tap Italian, Hungarian and other foreign wines in the house and to lodge travellers.

Enter from Národní 416/37 or from Uhelný trh through the courtyard passage created in the Baroque alterations begun under Count Jan ze Šternberka after 1637. The Empire-style façade by builder Jindřich Hausknecht, from František Daubek's 1813 conversion, turned the main front south to Národní; the Lederer (Wimmer) fountain funded by Jakub Wimmer stands on Uhelný trh.

The owl on a perch at the Národní třída entrance is documented in a 1926 publication, which places a photo of it on page 47 and a text on Platýz on pages 45–49. The same source notes the palace's main façade once faced Uhelný trh, the coal market, before the Empire-style rebuilding turned the entrance south.