The Industrial Palace is the dominant feature of Výstaviště and this building has been under reconstruction since February 2022. In 4 years, a replica of the left wing will be exhibited with reference to its original industrial form, and the central hall and right wing will undergo complete reconstruction.
The Art Nouveau building dates from 1891 according to a design by Bedřich Münzberger, who collaborated with the engineer František Prášil. The decoration was made by Bedřich Ohman and Alois Dryák. The building is both an artistic and a technique monument.
History and architecture
The history of Výstaviště reaches back to the year 1891, when a grand industrial exhibition was held in Prague. The oldest building is the Industrial Palace, which was built precisely for this exhibition. Architecture with an iron structure was used here for the first time in the Czech lands. The palace was built over ten months in 1891 by 450 workers, in spite of exhibition grounds being hit by a flood and bitter cold at that time.
The project and implementation of the iron construction is the work of the First Czech-Moravian Machine Factory Kolben-Daněk in Prague, the work was carried out by 150 installers over 5 months. Figurative windows representing Industry and Science were placed in the side façade. They were made from golden-yellow cathedral glass according to drawings by Mikoláš Aleš. About one million coloured panes of glass set in lead were used for the combined images. A large replica of the royal crown with a cross, which had the form of the St. Wenceslas crown, was placed on the dome of the palace, and the apex of the middle hall now reaches a height of 51 meters. However, the crown, along with other elements, was already removed during the First Republic, as was a reminder of the attributes of the defunct empire. The signs of various guilds, which were related to what was exhibited at the Jubilee Land Exhibition, are still visible on the decoration of the right and left wings. The interior was renovated in 1907 according to a design from the architect Josef Fanta.
From 1952 to 1954, the building was reconstructed according to a design from Pavel Smetana. It was equipped with new vaults and an entrance annexe for organizing the Communist Party congresses. At that time, the palace was renamed the Congress Palace and its steel tower had a red star and the name PKOJF, which was an abbreviation of the name of the exhibition grounds at that time, the Julius Fučík Park of Culture and Rest. The Communist era ended at Výstaviště with the congresses moving to the Palace of Culture.
On Thursday, 16 October 2008, the left wing of the palace burned down at Výstaviště. In January 2022, the costly reconstruction of the entire building and the construction of the left wing began. It is slated for completion by the end of 2024.
The dominant feature of Výstaviště is the Industrial Palace, which was also built in 1891 as a temporary exhibition pavilion. In 2008, the left wing of the palace burned down completely during a fire and in 2022 the city embarked on the costly reconstruction of the entire building.