A Prague square reopens to fanfare, feedback, and Sacré-Cœur comparisons

Prague's Jiřího z Poděbrad Square reopened today after more than three years of construction. The city marked the occasion with cake, speeches, and champagne before the day-long celebrations commenced on a main stage flanked by the farmers' market on one side and a bank of giant red lounge chairs on the other.

But behind the ribbon-cutting, the more interesting story was the one city officials and architects told about the past and future of the second-largest square in inner Prague, second to Karlovo náměstí.

According to its designers, Jiřák, as it is affectionately called by locals, is, by design, a civic meeting space that has never quite achieved its intended purpose in its 130-year history.

"Jiřího z Poděbrad square has always had great potential, urban, historical, and cultural," said architect Pavla Melková of MCA atelier, who led the redesign with her partner Miroslav Cikán.

"Our task was to fulfill that potential and connect it to the life of the Vinohrady community and of Prague as a whole," Melková. 

The square itself dates to 1896, laid out on what had previously been the former vineyards that gave Vinohrady its name. It was known as King George Square until 1948, when it took on the Czech form of the same name it carries today.

Speaking at the opening ceremony on Wednesday, Cikán drew comparisons to the tombs of Roman emperors and Castel Sant'Angelo, and parallels between the square's relationship to its church with Paris's Sacré-Coeur.

Just like the Sacré-Cœur dominates its plaza in Paris, he said, the square of Jiřího z Poděbrad in Prague features a similar centerpiece: the Church of the Most Sacred Heart of Our Lord.

Built between 1928 and 1932 by the visionary Slovenian architect Jože Plečnik, the church boasts a striking 42-meter tower carrying a 7.6-meter glass clock face, the largest of its kind in the country. Today, the building is widely considered one of the most important pieces of 20th-century religious architecture in Europe.

The square's new modern paving is meant to echo the large-format granite tiles Plečnik originally designed for Prague Castle's third courtyard with a climate-friendly update.

Instead of letting rainwater puddle or run off into the streets, the new eco-friendly stone drains into two massive underground tanks that can hold over 65,000 gallons of water to help keep the square green, prevent flooding, and keep the area cool.

"It's an example of how public spaces in a dense city can work with nature," Cikán said, referring to a system that collects rainwater from the church roof and uses it to water trees planted in specially prepared soil that retains moisture.

Not everyone is convinced the result lives up to that ambition. Criticism circulating on social media in the run-up to today's opening called the new space "a mini Gobi desert with some implanted trees," focusing on too much paving and not enough greenery for a project that ran years behind its original 2002 schedule.

The red lounger chairs drew the most ire. Commenters compared the design to similar furniture in Vienna and likened the curved red shapes to Russian sleighs, questioning whether the loungers were functional at all.

"Too hot to sit on in summer sun, with no back support, and an unclear sense of who they're actually for," one social media user wrote on Facebook.

But at today's opening, the mood among the people actually using the space was different.

"I've been living in this particular area for seventeen years," said Nyoman Purnata, a chef originally from Bali. "My wife keeps telling me, let's move somewhere else, but I said no, this is where we're staying." He said he had no complaints about the new design.

"Compared to what was here before, it's much better, much cleaner, and there's more room for kids to run around."

Whatever the verdict on social media, on opening day, at least, the new square looked like the community gathering space its architects intended. Speaking at the ribbon-cutting ceremony this morning, Prague 3 mayor Michal Vronský best described the vibe:

"Jiřák is, for me, the archetype of a square," Vronský said. "There's a church, a school, a market, shops. Among Prague's other major squares, it's unique for its neighborly character."