The publication presents the architectural development and decoration of the Thun Palace

Prague - The architectural development of the Thun Palace in Prague's Lesser Town, which serves as the main building of the Chamber of Deputies, is presented in a publication issued by the parliamentary office. It follows up on a previous exhibition and also discusses the artistic decoration of the historical building. The publication will not be available for sale, but can be accessed by interested parties in the parliamentary library and in some public libraries.

According to the heritage expert Ondřej Šefců, the palace remembers not only the Thun family and their grand hall, where theater performances, meetings of the Czech governorate, or the beginnings of the Czechoslovak Republic took place. “If we start digging into history, we get into the foundational and cellar structures and into archaeological terrains, and we can confidently talk about the fact that some sort of primordial foundations of these buildings began to take shape as early as the 9th or 10th century,” said Šefců during today's presentation of the publication in the Chamber.

He believes that the site has a great memory and that the choice of Lesser Town buildings as the seat of the Chamber was correct. "I have a modest joy that the area functions despite all the small difficulties, such as with transportation, and I think it is wonderfully maintained,” Šefců noted, who oversaw the reconstruction of the palaces for the Chamber of Deputies in the 1990s. "The question is what would then become of the palaces, whether there would be hotels or something similar,” he remarked.

The construction of the current main building of the Chamber began with the Thuns in 1695, with the dominant feature being the hall on the first floor. Occasional theater performances were held there since 1737, and later the hall was entirely used for theater operations. In 1794, the building was damaged by a large fire. In the early 19th century, the Czech estates purchased the Thun Palace and began remodeling it for the provincial assembly. The newly modified hall has been in use since April 1861. The hall is characterized by gilded decorations and female figures that seem to hold up the stucco ceiling.

"The fact that Parliament will endure in these spaces for another decades and that discussions are held here even after more than 160 years would probably surprise all the contemporary participants. It would also surprise contemporary journalism, which believed that the Czech lands deserved a better Chamber," noted Petr Valenta from the Parliamentary Institute. He mentioned that at that time, consideration was also given to the Vladislav Hall, the Spanish Hall at the Castle, or the refectory at Clementinum.