Italian Court, Kutná Hora

Overview of the complex

The palace forms a closed block on an irregular square plan, with four wings arranged around an inner courtyard. The fabric preserves medieval and later work, with a clear layer of 19th‑century neo‑Gothic restoration superimposed on older masonry. Original circulation focused on the courtyard, from which the main working and representative rooms open.

Mint workshops and heraldry

Around the courtyard are the coin‑makers’ workshops, the smithies where parts for coin production were worked, and the minting chamber known as the Preghaus, where Prague groschen were struck. From the yard there are now‑blocked original doorways that once led to eight royal mining‑town workshops, called shmitna. Several carved city coats of arms once marked individual workshops; six fragments remain showing the arms of Litoměřice, Klodzko, Jihlava, Opava, Most, and Písek, surviving in situ as evidence of the mint’s administrative network.

Chapel and liturgical fittings

On the first floor the Chapel of St. Wenceslas and St. Ladislaus is a Gothic hall with a net vault that springs from a central pillar, and a five‑sided presbytery set in an oriel facing the courtyard. The chapel, produced by the Parler workshop, was consecrated in 1389. Its painted wall decoration dates mainly from the 19th‑century restoration; late Gothic furnishings originally included three altars. A painted altar‑shrine with a relief of the Dormition of the Virgin was ordered from Nuremberg, and a votive panel showing the mourning Christ flanked by St. Wenceslas and St. Ladislaus was commissioned by the chief mintmaster — the original of that panel is kept in a museum while a copy stands in the chapel.

Representative interiors and treasury

Beneath a private chapel lies a secured treasury room protected by a wrought‑iron door, above which a carved Latin inscription reads, in translation, “Do not touch me!” The hall of audience was extensively remodelled at the end of the 19th century and presents a neo‑Gothic beam ceiling together with large wall paintings executed in 1899–1900 that depict the Kutná Hora Decree and the election of Vladislaus Jagiellon.

Façade, courtyard and defensive lower works

The façade is animated by a projecting prismatic tower and the inner courtyard contains a fountain. The palace was originally separated from the town by moats; the lower parts of those moats survive today as cellar spaces that once held water and helped protect the castle from fires. The building therefore presents a stratified set of remains: medieval mint and chapel spaces, heraldic and workshop fragments, and a late 19th‑century layer of neo‑Gothic restoration and fittings.