Prague is amazing when it comes to the various events and cultural opportunities offered to its residents. If you are in the loop, it is often even possible to have a choice of activities, every weekend, all of which are without charge. On May 14-15 one of these brilliant free activities, called Open House Praha, took place. It is referred to as a festival of architecture and the city (and private businesses/owners) open up various buildings that are normally inaccessible to the general public. Many of the state-owned buildings are old vilas (Czech spelling) or palaces, while the privately owned buildings are many times fancy, new-age businesses with impressive modern architecture, such as Google headquarters Praha. If you are interested in seeing a full list of the 50ish properties and some information about each, you can
check out the site.
I only got in on four of the different sites: Invalidovna, Hlavní Nádraží salonek, Masarykovo Nádraží salonek, and Nákladové Nádraží Žižkov. Let's take a quick look at each of them:
Invalidovna
After exiting the yellow line metro station of the same name, you arrive at Invalidovna. Invalidovna was originally build in the 1700's as a residence for injured war veterans and their families. It was modeled after the facility with the same name in Paris, Les Invalides, built around a hundred years prior. The building is only one ninth of the original plan, due to a lack of funding. However, the facility is still absolutely gigantic. It has been left vacant for quite some time and served as the location for military archives until recently. The building suffered heavy water damage during the great flood of 2002.
It was extremely cool walking through such an enormous, deserted building. Almost spooky, as in many rooms it seemed as if they had simply been left. Left without cleaning, without actually closing the area or establishing some sense of finality to it. I would imagine the area is often visited by homeless, as the grounds are so expansive and I only saw a single security guard watching the plot.
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| Side gate of Invalidovna |
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| Waiting to get into the premises |
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| Inside the old chapel |
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An example of one of the rooms. The overwhelming light in the photo might
actually be a familiar sight to many of the once residents of the facility.... |
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A perfect example of the eeriness of the building. Looking down one
of the main halls |
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| A pool/fountain outside an office building near the Invalidovna metro |
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| A school on the walk from Invalidovna to the next attraction |
The Nádražís: Hlavní (Main) & Masarykovo
After Invalidovna I continued to two of the biggest and most well-known train stations in Prague, the main train station and Masarykovo train station. These stations each had opened their "salonek", or lounge, normally off limits. The first station on the list was Masarykovo, with its Imperial Lounge. It was fairly small, ornately decorated, and hard to get a good photo of. The area didn't seem so much like a lounge as a conference room, but I'm sure the furniture has been rearranged at a couple points throughout the last 150 years or so.
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| Imperial Lounge |
In the main train station we were able to tee the governmental lounge as well as the assembly room. The seating in this lounge appeared immensely more comfortable and the room was covered in gorgeous painting of various famous sites within Prague and the Czech Republic.
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| Main train station |
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A painting of Vyšehrad on the upper wall of
the lounge |
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A second image of Old Town Square
decorates the door to the assembly room |
Nákladové Nádraží Žižkov (Žižkov Freight Station)
This was a really cool place to wander around, although there really isn't too much for me to say about it. I actually just missed the official Open House Praha tour, so I was left to explore the old station on my own. The freight station was functioning all the way until 2002, when it shut down and became a controversial area of land, as there were conflicting ideas of what it should be used for. The push to pronounce it a cultural heritage site finally won out though, and now it hosts a slew of different cultural performances and events, as well as houses a café that sits in one of the old loading stations.
