palác Lucerna, Prague

Lucerna Palace is a vast entertainment and shopping complex threaded by a glass-roofed passage. Its unusual beginning is worth knowing: construction ran from 1907 to 1921, and the project was changed from a planned hockey stadium into a large social hall when the dimensions proved unsuitable. Vácslav Havel carried out the building work, with Stanislav Bechyně and Dobroslav Hnídek among the named architects.

The structure belongs to secesní architektura, with features from late Art Nouveau and the arriving modernism. At the passage junction by the Lucerna cinema, look for David Černý’s suspended sculpture Kůň, made in 1999: Saint Wenceslas sits on the belly of his dead horse. The complex includes the Great Hall, the Marble Hall, a cinema, a bar, and a café.

The Great Hall measures 54 metres long, 25.5 metres wide, and 9 metres high; it occupies three underground levels and can hold about 2500 standing or 1500 seated spectators. The cinema opened on the third of December 1909 and has 453 seats, making it one of Europe’s oldest cinemas still operating. Across from the Great Hall entrance, the paternoster travels through six office floors. Lucerna became a national cultural monument in 2017.