Czernin Palace

Stand still for a moment on the cobbles of Loreto Square. The stones are uneven under your shoes, worn smooth by centuries of carts and feet. Ahead of you, a single wall of pale stone runs on and on. It runs so far that your eyes have to travel to find its end. This is Czernin Palace, and its scale is the first thing it gives you.

The facade stretches roughly one hundred and fifty metres along the square. That makes this the longest Baroque palace front in Prague. Baroque, for anyone new to the term, is the dramatic, theatrical style of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, built to impress and to overwhelm. Here it works through repetition rather than ornament. Count the giant half-columns marching across the upper floors... there are thirty of them, in a single, steady rhythm.

Now drop your gaze to the base of the building. The lower storey is not smooth. Each stone block is cut into a sharp, faceted point, like the face of a diamond. Architects call this rustication. The effect is heavy, rough and strong, as if the palace grows out of the hill itself. Above that rugged base, the columns rise clean and calm. Rough below, refined above — that contrast is deliberate.

The man behind all this was Humprecht Jan Czernin, a Bohemian nobleman who served as the imperial ambassador to Venice. He began building in the second half of the seventeenth century, around the 1660s. Venice had shown him palaces of real grandeur, and he wanted one of his own at home. The design came from Francesco Caratti, an architect of Italian origin who worked in Bohemia. Together they planned something larger than almost anything around it.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. Look at where the palace stands. It sits on the same hilltop as Prague Castle, only a short walk away. A noble family building a residence this large, this close to the seat of power, was making a clear statement. Locals have long told a story that the emperor himself was not pleased by the ambition of it. Treat that as a tale, not a record... but the sheer length of this wall makes the story easy to believe.

Ambition, however, is expensive. The palace took a very long time to complete, and the family struggled with its costs over the generations. By the nineteenth century, the great noble residence had lost its glamour. The Czernins sold it, and the building became military barracks. Imagine soldiers' boots on these floors, and laundry where ambassadors once dined. For decades, one of Prague's grandest buildings was simply a place to house troops.

The second life of the palace began after 1918, when Czechoslovakia became an independent state. The new country needed a home for its diplomats. The old barracks were restored and rebuilt for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Czech architect Pavel Janák led much of this work, adapting the interiors for modern government while keeping the old frame. The ministry has used the building ever since, with interruptions caused by history.

And history interrupted hard. During the Nazi occupation of the Second World War, the palace served the German authorities who ruled the occupied Czech lands. The same halls that had been built for one empire's ambassador now served the administration of another. Standing here today, it is worth remembering that this calm facade has watched over very different governments, and very different intentions.

The most famous story of this building is also its darkest. In March 1948, just after the Communist takeover, Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk was found dead in the courtyard below his apartment window here. He was the son of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the founding president of Czechoslovakia. Officially, his death was called suicide. Many people have always believed he was murdered. Investigations over the decades have never closed the question completely. The courtyard is out of sight from the square, but it is there, behind these walls.

Now for a surprise of a gentler kind. In July 1991, after the fall of Communism, the Warsaw Pact was formally dissolved in Prague, and the signing took place in this palace. The Warsaw Pact was the military alliance of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites. So the building where a Czech minister died at the start of Communist rule also saw the end of the Soviet bloc's alliance. Few buildings close a circle so neatly.

Because this is a working ministry, you usually cannot wander inside. The doors open to the public only on occasional special days, so most visitors know the palace from the outside. That is not a loss. The facade is the real performance here. Walk slowly along its full length. Notice how the columns repeat, how the windows keep their spacing, and how the light changes the colour of the stone as you move.

Turn around now, and look across the square. Facing the palace stands the Loreto, a pilgrimage site with its own Baroque front and a tower that holds a carillon — a set of tuned bells that play melodies. If you are lucky, you will hear those bells while you stand here. The two buildings make a striking pair. One is a monument to earthly power, the other to faith, and they face each other across the same open stones.

Before you walk on, take one last look along that long pale wall. Think of the ambassador who wanted Venice on a Prague hill, the soldiers in its halls, the minister in its courtyard, and the treaty signed inside. Then listen to the square around you — the footsteps, the trams below, perhaps the Loreto bells. The palace is still at work today, quietly, behind its thirty columns. And you are standing in front of all of it.