National Theatre

Palace · New Town / Vltava embankmentPrague,Czechia

A neo-Renaissance opera and drama house on Prague's embankment, paid for twice by public collection after fire gutted it weeks after it opened.

The National Theatre is a heavy neo-Renaissance block on the embankment with a blue-and-gold roof and bronze chariots on the corners, and that roof is what catches the low sun from across the river. Inside is the opposite: gold leaf, painted ceilings and a hand-painted stage curtain, all made by one group of young artists. It has opera, ballet and drama in repertoire, so most evenings the building is doing the thing it was built for. It was paid for by public collection, coin by coin, at a time when Czech was the language of the countryside and German ran the city. The motto they cut above the stage says it plainly: Národ sobě, the nation to itself. Then, weeks after the doors first opened, a fire started during roofing and gutted the building. They collected all over again, and it was rebuilt within two years. That is the thing to carry into the auditorium with you: this is a room a poor nation paid for twice.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The roof does the work at sunset — the gilding faces west across the water, so the crown lights up for a few minutes while the facade underneath stays in shadow.
The curtain shows the people who paid for it — Vojtěch Hynais painted the subscribers in the act of building the theatre, and it comes down between the acts.
Look at the glass box next door — the New Stage of 1983, a cube of green glass blocks, was set beside it deliberately as a contrast and still divides opinion in the city.

Things to do

1
Watch the roof from the bridge
Walk to the middle of the Legion Bridge in the last hour before sunset. The gold roof and the bronze chariots come alight while the embankment below drops into shadow. The building reads the way it was meant to be read from the far bank: a crown standing over the river rather than a block standing on a street.
2
Sit through one act
Opera, ballet and drama run in repertoire most nights. Even a single act gets you the auditorium: the painted ceiling, the tiers of gold, the curtain coming down, and an audience that is largely local rather than visiting.