Prague uncovered: Letná park, from Stalin to the Blob and beyond

One of Prague’s jewels is Letná park, with its winding paths, large open fields, tennis court, beer garden and various public sculptures.

One of its legacies is the base for a long-gone statue of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. The stonework now serves as a skateboard court and the home to a giant modern metronome.

Going back in history, the park saw the beginnings of the city’s now massive public transit system, which began with a modest cable car.

There have also been plans that never were fulfilled, including sawing Letná in half to make a wide avenue and building a modern blob-like library.

The statue, in place from May 1, 1955, until the end of 1962, was the largest group statue in Europe and weighed 17,000 tons. It was made of 235 granite blocks. One button on Stalin’s coat was a meter wide.

Work on the original statue began in 1950. Stalin died in 1953, and by the time the statue was finished, the cult around him was already falling apart and the monument was a source of some embarrassment until it was destroyed. Residents of Prague referred to the statue as the “line for meat” (fronta na maso), as it resembled people waiting outside a shop to get goods in short supply.

The statue brought bad luck to many of those involved with it. Sculptor Otakar Švec killed himself just before it was unveiled. The man who modeled for Stalin, an electrician from Barandov Studios, faced endless ridicule and turned to heavy drinking, which precipitated an early death.

Authorities at the time of the statue’s destruction forbid people from filming it and only a few pictures were clandestinely shot capturing the massive explosion propelled by 800 kilograms of explosives.

The pedestal is still in place, and currently supports a giant metronome called Time Machine.

The base of the monument was built as a bomb shelter, and in the 1990 was home to a pirate radio station called Radio Stalin and was later a rock club and a venue for fights.

A statue of Michael Jackson stood there briefly on the same spot in 1996 for the launch of the HIStory tour. Jackson’s concert took place on Letná Plain.

Both exhibitions took place in Holešovice. The 1991 exhibition was not successful, and the organizing company ended in bankruptcy.

Today, the Metronome is actually privately owned and operated by Pražská správa nemovitostí.

The original idea was more complex, but technically unfeasible at the time. A laser beam from Old Town Square was supposed to light up the Metronome, visually linking the historical past to the ever-ticking future. The concept was revived briefly as part of the 2013 Signal festival of light art.

In 2003, the Metronome was used to promote the Czech Republic’s EU entry by oscillating between the words “yes” and “no.”

Novák, who passed away in 2014, graduated from Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, and since the 1960s has been known for his mobile sculptures and kinetic objects. For a long time he lived in a former church in the town of Rýnovice, and used a converted morgue as his artistic studio.

Prague’s first cable car opened on May 31, 1891, and operated until 1916. It was definitively abolished in 1922. It led from the long-gone bridge Most císaře Františka Josefa I., approximately where Štefánikův most now stands, and took people to Letenský zámeček, which even then was a popular hangout.

The cable car, on a double track, was operated by Správní rada lanové dráhy na Letnou, which was the first city-owned transit company. Other trams and buses were privately operated. In 1900, it was taken over by Elektrické podniky královského hlavního města Prahy, the forerunner of the current Prague Public Transit Company (DPP), and electrified in 1903.

The electric tram was the idea of inventor František Křižík, operating from 1891 to 1900. It was a prototype design, built to coincide with the 1891 General Land Centennial Exhibition. Previously, trams had been pulled by horses.

The track was a monorail, with the tram going back and forth on the short route. The trip, with a speed limit of 10 km/h took about five minutes.

His plan would have meant cutting right through the rocky cliffs of Letná. He envisioned more than just a tunnel. Sketches and models show a massive two-sided colonnade, covered by a walkway on top, and lots of classical sculptures.

While the plan was never put into effect, a detailed plaster model can be found in the National Gallery in Prague’s permanent exhibition at Veletržní palác.

Still, the idea has its fans. “Personally, I regret that Jan Koula’s proposal for the Letná excavation from 1907, which was to build on the monumental bridge Čechův most, by the same author, was not realized. Fifty years later, a monument to Josef Stalin was built in its place, and the excavation was replaced by the Letná Tunnel several hundred meters further. Čechův most actually leads nowhere and ends in a green slope,” architect Petr Kučera told the newspaper Metro in 2017 when plans for unbuilt projects were exhibited.

The Blob was the winner of an architectural contest in 2007 to create an additional space for the National Library (NK).

After architect Jan Kaplický won the NK architectural contest, then-president Václav Klaus and Prague’s then-mayor Pavel Bém (ODS) opposed its construction, and publicly ridiculed the proposal.

Kaplický died in 2009, still hoping that the Eye Over Prague would be built, but opposition just grew stronger.

Some losing architects in the original contest claimed that the design did not meet the stated criteria. The Court of Appeals decided in 2015 that the winning proposal should have been disqualified. The Supreme Court upheld the decision, ruling that 3 million CZK should be paid to the losing architects to make up for the differences in prize money once the winner was excluded.

The Blob has made several appearances. A small version of its facade has been incorporated into a bus stop in Brno, and a video-mapping of its shape was projected onto a tent in 2015 during the Letní Letná theater festival in Prague’s Letná park, not far from the originally planned building site.

The current Prague City Hall administration has no interest in the Blob being made, and in January 2019 backed out of a new study on the feasibility of the project. The study had been commissioned by the previous city administration, in which Kaplický’s widow, Eliška Kaplický Fuchsová, had served as a city councilor for the ANO party until October 2018.

The plans have since been turned over the state, on the condition that if it is built it will be on the original site, and that architects from Kaplický’s firm Future Systems would supervise any future development.