Pardubice train station celebrates 60 years, renovations are expected to take place in about three years

Pardubice - Repairs of the train station building in Pardubice will take place no sooner than in three years. The building is a protected monument, and its repairs must be coordinated with conservationists as well as the copyright holder. The preparation of documentation is in its early stages. Jaroslav Špína, the director of the Hradec Králové Railway Station Administration SŽDC, said this to ČTK. One of the most significant post-war functionalist buildings celebrates 60 years since its opening on May 1.

"We will see how it will be possible to reconcile the demands of a modern dispatch hub, conservationists, and the copyright holder. For example, we would like to have escalators to the underpass, and we want to renovate the restrooms. Everything is in the initial stage; we are starting negotiations," Špína said.

The Railway Transport Administration announced that it will begin modernizing the railway hub in the middle of next year, needing four billion crowns for it. The process will take two and a half years. Repairs to the station building along with the adjacent hotel, designed by the prominent architect Karel Řepa, will start later and will cost hundreds of millions of crowns. The copyright for the building is held by the architect's son, Miroslav Řepa.

Karel Řepa, a native of Pardubice, was a student of the Slovenian architect Josip Plečnik, and a number of buildings in his hometown bear his signature; in addition to public buildings, he designed apartment houses and family villas. He favored the alternation of unplastered and plastered masonry and sections clad with ceramic tiles.

Similarly, the station building features black cladding in the lower sections, while the upper part consists of brick-red tiles. The hall is illuminated by bricked-up glass blocks in the upper sections. Řepa designed the state contract together with Josef Danda and Karel Kalvoda in the late 1940s, and the construction work lasted until 1958. The first train arrived on May 1, 1958, at 14:30, with a festively decorated train marking the opening of the station.

"The Pardubice train station is one of the most significant buildings in terms of modern architecture monuments of the 20th century,” Pavel Panoch, the vice-dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Pardubice and an art historian, told ČTK.

Josef Danda specialized in designing station buildings, particularly regarding the resolution of layouts and logistics. Pardubice architect Karel Kalvoda focused on interiors. Karel Řepa is a pivotal name in Pardubice architecture; he dedicated his entire professional career to the city and its surroundings, added Panoch.

The station stands at the site of a former sugar factory that was destroyed during wartime bombings. The complex features a spacious dispatch hall. The shorter walls inside are decorated with mosaics of the zodiac and maps of Czechoslovak cities connected by railway. On the longitudinal walls above the ticket counters are modern photographs of interesting places in the Pardubice region.

In the eastern wing, there is, for example, a transport office; the western part includes technical facilities and rental spaces. The dispatch building is connected to a hotel, a seven-story structure that is currently leased by SŽDC and is only partially occupied.