The ministry is once again dealing with the house at Wenceslas Square

Prague - The Disciplinary Commission recommended to the Minister of Culture Alena Hanáková (TOP 09 and STAN) to initiate proceedings to review the decision of the Heritage Department of the Ministry of Culture regarding the building at the corner of Wenceslas Square and Opletalova Street. In September, the department decided that the building, which its owner wants to demolish and replace with a new one, would not be declared a cultural monument.
     "The review process is initiated by a decision that will be signed by the minister. And she will probably sign it tomorrow,” said the ministry's spokesperson Markéta Ševčíková to ČTK today. The minister had doubts about whether the decision was unlawful and whether the public interest in the protection of cultural heritage could have been harmed. The commission found that the minister's assumptions were justified, the spokesperson stated. The review process is led by the minister herself, with assistance from the Disciplinary Commission; she may also request additional independent expert opinions.
     With the initiation of the review process, the enforceability of the previous decision, that is, the decision that the building is not a monument, is deferred, she added. Until the review process is completed, the building is subject to protection as if it had been declared a monument.
     The Heritage Department of the ministry decided not to declare the building a monument, although in its justification it acknowledges the undisputed qualities of the structure and its important place in the Prague Heritage Reserve. However, its staff did not declare the house a monument because they did not want "the consequences of serious legal flaws" in the views of the city’s heritage protectors to "heal the overvaluation of the qualities of the subject building."
     The demolition of the building was permitted by the city’s Heritage Department. Although the cultural heritage experts from the Ministry of Culture found its stance unlawful and revoked it, this was only done after the legal deadline. The then Minister of Culture Jiří Besser (TOP 09 and STAN) therefore canceled his heritage experts' decision because the owner of the building had calculated with the municipal decision for half a year, and its annulment by the ministry could allegedly jeopardize his investment.
     Art historians, after the latest decision of the Ministry of Culture became known, again submitted a proposal for the building to be declared a cultural monument. They did so "given the fundamental contradiction between the positive assessment of the building's qualities by the Ministry of Culture and the entirely vague final justification." According to the historians, the Ministry of Culture's argumentation in the decision not to declare the building a monument is, paradoxically, in accordance with the original justification of the proposal by the Art Historical Society for its designation as a monument.