The Cubist Lamp Post on Jungmannovo náměstí
Why is it significant?
Find the lamp post in the corner of the square, beside the gateway to the church: a column cut into sharp facets, like a crystal or a pencil sharpened by a geometry teacher, topped with a lantern. Most people walk straight past it, or lean on it to check their phone.
Key Facts
| Place | The Cubist Lamp Post on Jungmannovo náměstí |
|---|---|
| Address | Jungmannovo náměstí, 110 00 Praha 1, Czechia |
| Geo Coordinates | 50.08330, 14.42370 |
| Part of Walk | Gilded Leaves and Crystal Facades: Prague's Art Nouveau & Cubist Walk |
| Generated | Generated |
Find the lamp post in the corner of the square, beside the gateway to the church: a column cut into sharp facets, like a crystal or a pencil sharpened by a geometry teacher, topped with a lantern. Most people walk straight past it, or lean on it to check their phone.
It is, as far as anyone knows, the only Cubist street lamp in the world. It dates from around 1912 or 1913, and it is usually credited to the architect Emil Králíček. It is made not of carved stone but of concrete, which at the time was itself a modern, almost rebellious material.
Why would anyone make a lamp Cubist? Because in Prague, Cubism was not only a way of painting. In Paris, Picasso and Braque broke apples and guitars into facets on canvas. In Prague, a handful of young architects, Gočár, Janák, Chochol, Králíček, decided that the same idea could shape houses, chairs, cups and even street furniture. They believed matter had an inner energy, and that a building could show it bursting out through crystal-like surfaces. Around the corner on Spálená, Králíček also designed the Diamant house, with a Cubist gateway framing an old baroque statue.
Now turn towards the gateway beside the lamp. Behind it rises the Church of Our Lady of the Snows, founded by Charles IV in 1347. It was meant to be bigger than St Vitus Cathedral, but only the choir was ever finished, and it is still one of the tallest church interiors in Prague. In 1419 the radical preacher Jan Želivský led his congregation from here to the New Town Hall, where they threw the councillors out of the windows... the first Prague defenestration.
In the middle of the square, Josef Jungmann sits in bronze, the man who wrote the great Czech-German dictionary and helped save Czech as a language of culture. From here, walk to Můstek, follow the wide boulevard of Na Příkopě and then turn right into Panská, a narrow street that leads to a baroque palace full of Art Nouveau women.