Palace U Stýblů (Alfa Palace)

Palace Alfa is named after the dance café Alfa, formerly Boulevard. Originally, the building was called the Stýbl Palace or U Stýblů after its owner. The house, located in the very heart of Prague, was built in 1928 and 1929 by architects Ludvík Kysela and Jan Jarolím in the style of constructivism, replacing two low original houses with a passage to the courtyard. Thus, a multifunctional building was created, featuring a shopping gallery, the renowned dance café Boulevard (later named Alfa), a restaurant, offices, apartments, and a legendary cinema hall. A low building was added behind the gallery towards the Franciscan Garden, where the New Theatre commenced operations in 1934. From 1959, the Semafor Theatre performed here for many years. Perpendicular to the Alfa gallery is the Světozor passage from Vodíčkova Street. Both are connected to the Franciscan Garden. In the second half of the 1950s, the CinemaScope widescreen format made its first appearance in our country, and in 1956, the Alfa cinema was equipped with it as the first cinema in the republic. In the mid-1960s, a major renovation and reconstruction took place in the cinema due to emergency conditions – the ceiling had collapsed. In 1967, the cinema reopened – the auditorium was converted to a stadium style, connecting the last row of the original balcony with the first row on the ground floor – and it accommodated 1,200 viewers. The cinema transitioned to a 70 mm format (the first in Prague), a Dolby Stereo sound system, thus becoming a comfortable cinema with high image and sound quality, operating until 1994. In the 1990s, the entire building was returned in a dilapidated state to a descendant of the original owner.