The National Library will revise the renovation project of Klementinum

Prague - The National Library (NK) will revise the reconstruction project of Klementinum, which was submitted for environmental impact assessment (EIA). CTK was informed of this today by the spokesperson of the National Library, Barbora Stýblová. NK decided to change the plan due to comments made by the municipal department of culture and heritage preservation regarding the planned reconstruction. Therefore, the municipal office suspended the ongoing environmental impact assessment on Monday.
    "Based on the opinion of the department of culture and heritage preservation ... we decided to revise the plan to align it with the given comments," wrote NK to the municipal office. It adds that the revised solution means a change in the project, and consequently, it is unnecessary to continue with the current environmental impact assessment process.
    According to Stýblová, however, the National Library has not abandoned the project. "At the moment, we are fully preparing for the first phase of revitalization," Stýblová stated. This phase includes the eastern part of the complex, where the Mirror Chapel and Baroque Hall are set to be reconstructed, along with the roofs of the Astronomical and Clock Towers and a partial adjustment of the eastern wing vacated by the departure of the National Technical Library.
    The National Library has already announced a tender for a company to carry out the first part of the reconstruction. NK aims to start work in November.
    The plan that the National Library has now stepped back from did not please Prague's heritage protectors. The department of culture and heritage preservation deemed the overall project unacceptable in its assessment of the Klementinum reconstruction. It disapproves of the demolition of the service hall, the roofing of the Economic Courtyard, or the underground parking lot under the Technical Courtyard.
    "The submitted material anticipates very drastic interventions into the culturally and historically significant national cultural monument of Klementinum, which are fundamentally inappropriate as a whole," wrote the heritage protection department. They only acknowledged that it might be possible to consider some partial proposals if NK submits specific proposals backed by the necessary studies.
    The library has been planning the reconstruction and revitalization of Klementinum for a long time, but primarily wanted to combine it with the construction of a new building that was intended to address capacity issues. The project for the new building is currently dead mainly for political reasons, and the library is now focusing on building other spatial capacities. One of the five repair options that NK considered, for instance, proposed to build a storage facility in one of the courtyards.