R’n’B | “The Most Painted and Most Decorated Town of the 16th Century.” Renaissance Facades of Prachatice

Prachatice’s heyday was closely linked to the salt trade. To this day, the town has preserved remnants of its grand appearance from the second half of the 16th century, when public spaces became vehicles for sophisticated visual communication. The preserved collection of nearly twenty facades featuring elaborate figural paintings and sgraffito cycles represents, within the Czech context, a unique testament to the town’s early modern visual culture. These facades were not mere decoration—they spoke to the contemporary viewer through a complex language of images and accompanying texts. As early as the 16th and 17th centuries, some visual programs were gradually covered over with new plaster. The paintings and sgraffito were thus rediscovered only during renovation and restoration work at the end of the 19th and throughout the 20th century. Other projects, such as the decoration of the town hall, on the other hand, retained their “legibility” continuously.

The lecture will focus on both preserved and lost facades. It will explore various possibilities for research and interpretation and will attempt to present Prachatice in its gradual transformation as a city of image and text

Mgr. Vladislava Říhová, Ph.D., works at the Faculty of Restoration at the University of Pardubice. Her works include a book on Czech glass mosaics and on Renaissance and Mannerist stucco work, and she edited a publication focused on postwar art in public spaces in Moravia.