Ministry of Culture has allowed the demolition of Hotel Praha according to experts

Prague - Today, artists and art theorists submitted a complaint to the office regarding the Ministry of Culture's handling of the potential heritage protection of the Hotel Praha. They disagree with the owner's intention to demolish the hotel and believe that the ministry has assisted him in this regard with their actions. Indeed, the ministry did not even initiate proceedings regarding the declaration of the hotel as a cultural monument. The authors of the complaint assert that the hotel should have been declared a heritage site, thus protecting it from destruction.
The hotel was purchased by the financial group PPF, which announced in June that an inaccessible park for the public would be built in its place by the Open Gate school. Since then, several protest actions have taken place, and the professional public has expressed support for preserving the hotel. The complaint against the alleged inaction of the ministry was signed by 150 individuals.
The ministry received a proposal for the declaration of the hotel as a monument in February this year. It announced in June that it would not initiate proceedings; immediately afterward, the owner announced plans to demolish the building and erect a school in its place. According to the proposal's authors, the ministry's delay contributed to the loss of the hotel's furnishings.
Whether the ministry could have acted more swiftly is only hypothetical, according to Jiří Vajčner, the director of the heritage conservation department. "For example, we also received a complaint that it was too quick," he told ČTK. "There was no inaction; the file contains numerous pieces of evidence and opinions that we requested. Those four months were filled with activities and gathering evidence about whether the matter could hold value or not," he added. When asked if the evidence could have been gathered within the framework of initiated proceedings, he stated that the ministry must respect the property owner's rights.
"If there is suspicion that the proceedings would be uneconomical, meaning that we would obligate the owner to something without being convinced of the value's existence, we would be acting incorrectly," Vajčner said. He indicated that the authors of the proposal had only one goal when they submitted the proposal - to delay the demolition. "But that is a matter for the building authority. They are using this tool somewhat incorrectly. It is not because they are 100% convinced that the hotel has heritage value, but as they themselves state, they reacted only after the former owner announced plans to demolish the property," he added.
At the time the proposal was submitted, the building was still in nearly untouched condition; the authors of the proposal claimed that it contained many works of art, and thus, the hotel represented a unique comprehensive work of art.
They also informed the ministry that the then-owner was preparing to vacate the hotel and demolish it. "The purpose of initiating proceedings lies precisely in preventing the owner from disposing of the property until a decision is made, especially from making irreversible steps," experts remind.
Since the ministry did not initiate the relevant administrative proceedings for months, the former owner emptied the hotel at the beginning of June. The National Heritage Institute highlighted the architectural and artistic qualities of the hotel in its assessment from April. The employees of the heritage conservation department of the Prague magistrate inspected the hotel only after the furnishings had been removed. In their statement, they then noted that the hotel is a high-quality modernist building. However, its dimensions reportedly exceed those of the given part of Dejvice and cannot be "unambiguously and unequivocally evaluated as an architectural-urban contribution of its time".