Facade development of historical buildings in a town of Český Krumlov

There have been many mankind efforts to take the setting of living in artistic motif. If we dismiss a long period of prehistoric and medieval paintings, there are some records of feudal residences or towns in Bohemia from the late Gothic period. For example, the oldest view of Prague from 1493 in Chronicle book by Schedel.

A copy of painting "Division of Roses" by Josef See shows medieval Český Krumlov from the period of half-16th century, even though the appearance of the town itself is considerably distorted. There had been some different older materials than picture sources showing our town. Quite a numerous collection of painting and graphic depiction, dating from the second half of the 17th century, has been preserved. It shows towns of new nobility. A collage made by pasting pieces of straw and wood dating from 1660s is surprisingly quite an objective source of information. The most accurate form of the Baroque period town is a colour drawing by G. A. Hörner from 1743.

Antonín Langwell, an author of today valuable model of Prague from the early of 19th century, drawn to the scale 1 : 480, ranks among noticeable people of Český Krumlov. A photograph ( the oldest photographs of town were taken before 1867) started to play an important part in recording of romantic Český Krumlov in the late 19th century. A pottery model of Český Krumlov made in 1975 by the couple Pešek to the scale 1 : 200 shows the appearance of town in 1800.

In the first half of 1990s the appearance of Český Krumlov damaged gates was recorded by Václav Codl, a painter. The aim was to show the period appearance of town in only one space of time in all the paintings (with an exception of three development phases of the Český Krumlov Castle published by J. Wiltschke at the 600th anniversary of town establishment).

We decided to add a collection of 33 citizens´ houses of Český Krumlov with a description of individual development phases, including a short interpretation of their present state. Materials of building-historical researches of Český Krumlov historical buildings facades done by firm ARTECO B.M. s.r.o. in 1992 - 2003 were very useful source materials. We tried to introduce very sensitive problems of care of historical monuments to the public in a more illustrative way.

The collection was worked out with the assistance of former students of School of Applied Arts of St. Agnes in Český Krumlov. The colourful photo-documentation of discovered facade situations, continuously complemented during the house restorations, was the main source of information. It was also possible to take facade building adaptation of sight prominent buildings into consideration.

The Baroque and Classicism phase of buildings created the most numerous mapped out group. The buildings were chosen from approximately 400 valuable historical buildings of Český Krumlov. It is quite a small volume but a large scale of different houses represented by a former hospital Church of St. Jošt, monastery buildings, town hall, smaller and bigger citizens´ houses, garden summerhouse, niche chapel, former mill, paper-mill, washboard an a large collection of analytically presented older phases of facades from the post- war period. Due to the various scale you can create your own idea of the whole appearance of Český Krumlov facades during the individual space of time.

Jiří Bloch, Arteco B.M.
jiri.bloch@tiscali.cz

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