House of the Black Madonna, Cubist museum in Old Town, Czech Republic
The House of the Black Madonna is a four-story building in the heart of the Old Town with a distinctive facade of sharp angles and crystalline forms. The structure combines modern concrete construction with elements from the original baroque building that previously stood on this site.
Josef Gočár designed the house in mid-1911, at 31, for the wholesale merchant František Josef Herbst, who wanted a department store on the site of a baroque building. The Prague City Council approved the plans on 4 August 1911, and the building was completed in 1912 by the firm of Matěj Blecha. Its reinforced-concrete skeleton, inspired by the Chicago School, allowed the first-floor café to be built without interior pillars.
Inside you'll find furniture, paintings, and everyday objects that show how Czech artists embraced geometric forms in the early 1900s. The displays reveal how this bold style extended beyond art into the design of household items and decorative pieces.
A café on the ground floor serves coffee and pastries during opening hours, while the museum is accessible through a separate entrance. You can visit either area independently or combine both stops in one trip.
The Black Madonna on the corner is a polychromed carved copy placed there in 2000, replacing the baroque original that gave the house its name. The original came from the earlier baroque building on the site, demolished for Gočár's department store.
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