Town hall in Hradec Králové, Town hall and cultural monument at Large Square, Hradec Králové, Czech Republic.
The town hall is a late-Baroque building with two towers above the outer axes of its two-storey facade on the west side of Velké náměstí. Its four wings enclose a courtyard, and the basement keeps Gothic and Renaissance cellars; the facade is Classicist, with a balcony on four volute brackets and a two-tailed Bohemian lion in the gable.
The first written mention of the town hall dates from 1418, when it was recorded as damaged by strong wind and hail; the building had stood on the site by the late 14th century. In 1588 the complex took on a Renaissance form and a prison was set up there. A complete Baroque rebuilding in 1786–89 added the two towers, and in 1851–52 a Classicist reconstruction raised the building and its towers by one storey, the form kept today.
The facade carries a two-tailed Bohemian lion in its gable, set there after the double-headed Habsburg eagle was removed in 1918; the lion was plastered over in 1939 and uncovered again in 1945. Above the first-floor balcony window is a relief of a queen's head, recalling the city's former status as a royal dowry town.
The town hall stands in the block on the western side of Velké náměstí, next to the Bílá věž, the chapel of St Clement and Hanuš's house. The building is used mainly for offices and the mayor's ceremonial rooms, so visitors see the façade and the courtyard with its 1588 inscription plaque from outside.
The clock tower of 1696 was demolished in 1790, when the clocks from the ruined church of St Anthony on the Mýtské suburb were moved into the two new baroque towers. Those towers were then roofed with domes and decorated with gilded stars.
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