Černín Palace

Černín Palace in Prague, Czechia, was built for a leading Bohemian noble family beginning in the late 17th century as a large early Baroque residence and became one of the city’s most prominent secular buildings. Work began in 1669 and intensified in 1673 when Emperor Leopold I planned a visit, an acceleration of construction that nearly bankrupted the patron. From its first phase the palace played a high-profile role in the political and social life of Bohemia under Habsburg rule.

Construction continued across several decades. The initial building campaign in the 1670s produced the palace’s large four-wing layout around an inner courtyard; after the death of the original project leaders, successive supervisors carried the work forward. Interior completion took place roughly between 1717 and 1723, when the house acquired the elaborate high Baroque decorative program that defines its historic appearance.

The palace sustained serious harm during 18th-century hostilities and was plundered by French troops. Major repairs and decorative changes were carried out between 1744 and 1749, which included new main entrances on the principal façade and a boldly projecting central balcony, together with a covered garden passage topped by a heroic statue. In the later 18th century the building’s role shifted from a private noble residence to public and institutional uses: by 1779 a military hospital operated there and parts were let to a patriotic art society that staged exhibitions and sales that fed material into what would become Prague’s National Gallery. Financial pressures eventually forced the owning family to sell the property to the army.

In 1851, during the reign of Emperor Franz Joseph I, authorities converted the complex into barracks and implemented extensive alterations; in later years sections were repurposed as an orphanage. After the foundation of Czechoslovakia, President Tomáš Masaryk ordered a program of modernization. In 1928 the palace underwent a careful adaptation to serve as the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs while retaining key elements of its historic design.

During the German occupation in the Second World War the palace was used as the seat of the Reich Protectorate administration, hosting Konstantin von Neurath and, later, Deputy Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich; the Protectorate’s state secretary, Karl Hermann Frank, also worked there, and other German officials used parts of the building as offices and temporary residences. After the war the ministry returned to the palace. In March 1948 the building was the scene of the “third Prague defenestration,” when non‑Communist foreign minister Jan Masaryk died in the wake of the February 1948 Communist takeover of the Czechoslovak government. On 1 July 1991, in the palace’s ceremonial hall, a ministerial meeting chaired by President Václav Havel signed an agreement declaring the political organs of the Warsaw Pact to have ceased to exist, effectively marking the end of the Pact at that location. The palace continues to serve as the headquarters of the Czech Republic’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A surviving design connection recorded in later accounts links the palace’s plan to a sketch by the celebrated Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini, which was used as inspiration though Bernini himself never visited Prague.