New Town Hall, Prague

New Town Hall is Prague’s New Town civic hall. Gothic architecture shapes the complex. Construction unfolded gradually: its eastern wing was built between thirteen seventy-seven and thirteen ninety-eight, while the tower was erected between fourteen fifty-two and fourteen fifty-six.

The tower rises sixty-nine metres and contains six storeys; its ground level served as a prison. A chapel occupied the floor above, and people condemned to death made their final refuge there. On July thirtieth, fourteen nineteen, this hall became the scene of Prague’s first defenestration.

Town councillors were hurled from its windows and killed, and that violence began the Hussite Wars. The tower’s heavy masonry and the facade’s high gables carry the weight of that turbulent civic past.