Lucerna Palace: The Havels' Arcade and the Upside-Down Horse
Why is it significant?
Step inside the passage and let your eyes adjust to the dim light, the marble, the old cinema posters, the shops tucked into the walls. Then walk to where the arcade opens under a dome and look up.
Key Facts
| Place | Lucerna Palace: The Havels' Arcade and the Upside-Down Horse |
|---|---|
| Address | Vodičkova 36, 110 00 Praha 1, Czechia |
| Geo Coordinates | 50.08120, 14.42500 |
| Part of Walk | Wenceslas Square to the Dancing House: Prague's Century of Revolutions, 1918–1989 |
| Generated | Generated |
Step inside the passage and let your eyes adjust to the dim light, the marble, the old cinema posters, the shops tucked into the walls. Then walk to where the arcade opens under a dome and look up. There is Saint Wenceslas again, in full armour, sitting proudly on his horse... and the horse is hanging upside down from the ceiling by its legs, tongue lolling, very dead.
This is the work of David Černý, Prague's most reliable provocateur, and it has hung here since the end of the 1990s. It is a joke about the statue you just saw, about national myths, and, many people say, about politicians riding things that died long ago. Černý has never offered a single answer, which is exactly the point.
The building around it is just as interesting. Lucerna was built in stages from 1907 to the early 1920s by an entrepreneur called Vácslav Havel, and it was one of the first buildings in Prague to use reinforced concrete on this scale. He filled it with a cinema, which opened in 1909 and still screens films, a grand ballroom in the basement, cafés and shops. Between the wars, this was where Prague danced. His grandson, born in 1936, was named Václav.
After the Communist takeover in 1948, the family lost everything. The palace was confiscated, and young Václav Havel, branded a bourgeois child, was barred from the schools he wanted. He became a stagehand, a playwright, a dissident and a prisoner... and in 1989, the president. The family got Lucerna back after the revolution, and Havel later sold his share... a president, it seems, did not need to be a landlord as well.
Before you leave, notice the paternoster lifts and the long arcades running off in several directions, a whole network of covered streets inside the block. Leave by the exit onto Vodičkova street, cross over, and look for the passage that leads into a walled garden hidden in the middle of the block.