National Theatre, Prague
On the afternoon of 12 August 1881, two months after its opening, the National Theatre, built over thirteen years from the pennies of a whole nation, catches fire and loses its copper dome, auditorium and stage. Within 47 days the Czechs collect a million gulden to rebuild it, and it reopens in 1883.
- Year
- 1881
- Where
- Bohemia · CZ
- Era
- Industrial
- Coordinates
- 50.081, 14.413
The moment
It burned two months after it opened
The National Theatre in Prague opened on 11 June 1881 with the world premiere of Bedřich Smetana's opera Libuše, conducted by Adolf Čech, for a visit by Crown Prince Rudolf. After eleven more performances it closed again so the builders could finish the interior.
On the afternoon of Friday 12 August 1881, a day of gusty wind and passing showers, it caught fire. The copper dome over the auditorium, the auditorium itself and the stage were destroyed; the sandstone facades, the arcaded loggia and the statues survived.
The official cause was carelessness by workers on the roof. Rumours of German arson circulated at the time, and later investigations never settled the question.
Thirteen years of small donations
The building had been a long time coming. Its cornerstone was laid on 16 May 1868, to designs by Josef Zítek, who had won the competition of 1867, and the money came from collections among ordinary Czechs across the country.
It stood on the Vltava embankment at the head of the Chain Bridge of Emperor Francis I, a slender suspension bridge where the Legion Bridge has stood since 1901. Across the river, the cathedral on the castle hill was still only a choir and one great tower.
A million gulden in 47 days
The loss was felt as a national tragedy, and the answer was immediate. Within 47 days the public had given about a million gulden to rebuild.
Josef Schulz led the reconstruction and improved the sightlines of the auditorium. The theatre reopened on 18 November 1883, again with Libuše.
The painters and sculptors who decorated it, Mikoláš Aleš and František Ženíšek among them, gave their name to a whole cohort of Czech artists: the generation of the National Theatre.
The nation to itself
The motto of the building is Národ sobě, "The nation to itself". It describes how the theatre was paid for, twice: by a people without a state of their own, who wanted a grand stage in their own language and would not accept losing it.
That is why the fire and the collection are the emblem of the Czech National Revival that every schoolchild learns. The disaster turned a building into proof of what a nation could do for itself.
The building has grown since. The bronze chariot groups on its roofline were added in 1911, and the glass New Stage beside it came much later, but the facades that survived the fire of 1881 are the ones that still face the river.
Sources
Further reading
Tagged
- czechia
- prague
- bohemia
- national-revival
- national-theatre
- fire
- 19th-century
- vltava
Published
See also
1357
Charles Bridge, Prague
In 1357 Emperor Charles IV lays the foundation stone of a new stone bridge on the Old Town bank near St Clement's, fifteen years after ice and floodwater wrecked the Judith Bridge. Tradition sets the moment at 5:31 on 9 July, a palindrome of odd numbers; the bridge will take 45 years to finish.
1410
Old Town Square, Prague
On 9 October 1410 the Old Town councillors reward the clockmaker Mikuláš of Kadaň for the astronomical dial he has built on the town hall tower, the heart of today's Prague orloj. Below it the market square trades as usual in the year Wycliffe's books are burned in Prague and Jan Hus is excommunicated.
1939
Lower Wenceslas Square, Prague
On the morning of 15 March 1939, in a heavy fall of wet snow, German columns roll down Wenceslas Square as Hitler's troops occupy what remains of Czechoslovakia. Thousands of Praguers watch from the pavements, weeping, booing and singing the national anthem; that evening Hitler reaches Prague Castle, and the next day he proclaims the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.