The Supreme Court will hear the dispute over the replacement of lamps in the center of Olomouc

photo: Ester Havlová

Olomouc - The prolonged dispute between the city hall and architect Jan Šépka regarding the replacement of lamps in the Upper Square in the historic center of Olomouc will be discussed next Tuesday by the High Court in Olomouc. "I will demand the return of the original lamps," Šépka told ČTK today. Both the architect and the city hall appealed against last year's verdict of the regional court, which granted Šépka, as a co-author of the reconstruction of the Upper Square, an apology from the city and compensation of 100,000 CZK.

Šépka is bothered that the regional court did not order the city, in addition to the apology and compensation, to return the lighting of the Upper Square to its original state. "The square is being devastated by this intervention (lamp replacement) and the work is being damaged," stated Šépka, who noted that no information about the poor technical condition or low luminosity of the original Thorn lamps, which the city replaced with the Philips UrbanStar type, was presented in the regional court last year. "No one from the city or the technical services was able to say exactly what the reason for the lamp replacement was," Šépka remarked.

The regional court in Olomouc ruled last year that the city hall violated the rights of the authors of the reconstruction when replacing the lamps in the historic center of the city. The city disagreed and also appealed. "We perceive this legal dispute as a question of whether the property rights, in this case the rights of the statutory city and its citizens, will take precedence over copyright. I believe that the Constitution of the Czech Republic also states that property rights should be prioritized over copyright," commented the regional court's verdict by Mayor Antonín Staněk (ČSSD).

The lighting of the center of Olomouc has been discussed for many years. After the completion of the reconstruction of the Upper Square in 2001, it was found that the lamps installed at that time shone too little, but the city hall left them in place. By 2014, the fixtures were significantly worn out, so the city put forward a proposal to place brighter UrbanStar lamps in the center, which are located in the neighboring Lower Square.

However, the planned lamp replacement was not welcomed by preservationists or the authors of the Upper Square reconstruction, who advocated for the original lamps proposed in the city center renovation project. Instead, the city acquired Thorn columns in 2001, which the project authors subsequently approved.

Due to the dispute over the appearance of the lighting, the court issued a preliminary injunction in 2014 and banned the lamp replacement until the dispute was resolved. However, architect Šépka did not file a lawsuit in time, allowing the city to quickly replace the Thorn lamps with the UrbanStar type in September 2014.