Baroque Architecture in Bohemia

A complete history of Bohemian architecture during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries forms one of the most important chapters in the cultural history of Bohemia. In this period, art attained a remarkably high level, with Bohemia emerging as a rival to the other cultural centers of Europe. This was especially true in terms of architecture, which not only transformed the appearance of towns and villages in Bohemia but also played a part in the creation of the phenomenon known as the Baroque, which to this day remains an essential part of Czech cultural identity.

The monumental Baroque Architecture in Bohemia brings together multiple generations of art historians from Charles University and the Czech Academy of Sciences to offer the single most comprehensive examination and exploration of Bohemian architecture during this extraordinary period. The book begins with the Renaissance roots of Baroque Bohemia: it introduces readers to the influence of the cultured and eccentric Rudolf II, who moved the seat of the Holy Roman Empire back to Prague, inviting foreign artists, architects, and alchemists with him; it shows the importance of Albrecht von Wallenstein, whose military success in the Thirty Years’ War heralded a massive building campaign that helped usher in the Baroque age. When the book moves to the period commonly understood as the Baroque, it discusses leading Czech architects, such as Jan Blažej Santini-Aichel and Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer, but also focuses on lesser-known regional architects and the important Italian architects and artists that left their mark on Bohemia. The architectural and artistic developments are all set among the broader cultural and social context of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The book contains extensive pictorial documentation—most impressively Vladimír Uher and Martin Micka’s gorgeous architectural photographs.