Franz Joseph’s salons among final touches in Prague’s Art-Nouveau train station overhaul
The historic building of Prague’s main train station is one of Czechia’s foremost Art Nouveau landmarks. Reconstruction has been ongoing here since 2021, and is now nearing completion with its southern wing also set for a revamp. This includes halls and lounges used by emperors, presidents, and other state officials.
The structure, also referred to as the Fanta building, after its architect Josef Fanta, replaced the original Neo-Renaissance train station in 1909. Since 1979, it has itself been left largely unused, when a new arrival hall connected to the subway system was built underneath this historical building.
Having been neglected for decades, the Czech Railway Administration began reconstruction of the Art Nouveau building in 2021 in an attempt to bring back its former elegance and shed light on its rich history.
After completing the central arrival hall and most of the northern wing, the building’s southern wing is next up on the restoration agenda – at an estimated cost of around 750 million crowns. Director of the Railway Administration’s Construction Department, Petr Hofhanzl, explains what exactly this entails:
“Everything will be restored to its original state, but we are also looking for new, commercial ways of using the space. Think a café, or a patisserie. In the former arrival hall, the reconstruction will be most significant. We will remove the retrofit ceiling that was added in the 1950s, including the massive mosaic pillars that hold it up. This will bring the building back to how it looked when it was first constructed,” he says.
While the most substantial part of the reconstruction will be devoted to public spaces, the station’s private lounges will also be reworked. Terezie Krejbychová, commercial manager for the City of Prague, describes their importance:
“They are original salons, which served as reception lounges for Emperor Franz Joseph I and the imperial family. Today, they are called ‘government lounges’, and are still sometimes used to receive high-profile state officials and presidents.”
Other documented guests of Franz Joseph’s lounges include the likes of Thomas Edison, Le Corbusier, or Charlie Chaplin. The station itself is also known for being the embarkation point for 669 mostly Jewish children evacuated to the UK by Sir Nicholas Winton in at the start of World War II.
In domestic history, the most notable event at the Fanta building was President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk’s ceremonious arrival in December 1918 after having secured Czechoslovak independence. During reconstructions in the building’s northern wing, renovators discovered a polychrome painting of the Czechoslovak state crest, believed to have been painted for the occasion.
This finding, along with the remainder of works on the northern wing, have been met with positive reception, according to the Railway Administration’s general director, Jiří Svoboda, quoted in the organization’s press release:
“Experts greatly appreciated the way we restored the first part of the building. Thanks to the careful and sensitive reconstruction, the Fanta Hall and the Column Hall have become popular venues for conferences and events — activities are held here almost every day”
Preserving cultural heritage is an equal priority for the Railway Administration as modernization efforts. The reconstruction of the Fanta building is the best proof of that," he says.
The modern arrival hall is, in fact, also set for a major overhaul. In 2023, Danish studio Henning Larsen Architects won the train station’s redevelopment competition, with the proposal of a futuristic open-plan timber construction. The works are planned to begin in 2028.
