Granovsky Palace

Brief Information

The Granovský Palace grew out of a building that had itself served as the entrance to Týn: the Gothic house included carriage gates leading into the Ungelt area and two wings on either side. So this is not simply a Renaissance façade among Prague buildings, but a place where an earlier passageway function became part of the palace shell.

In 1559–1560, Jakub Granovský rebuilt the house he had acquired into a Renaissance palace. The building has survived in this form to the present day, but its appearance did not remain fixed once and for all: a later reconstruction altered the upper part of the outer side, while the faded sgraffito and frescoes on the façades were restored in fragments and in whole sections. Because of this, the palace is best read as an object with several visible layers: the gate and wings recall the old Ungelt, the Renaissance decoration speaks of the house’s transformation into the Granovský family’s property, and the upper windows point to a later intervention.

What to Notice First

It is worth comparing three groups of details. In the courtyard, the arcaded loggia is important: it appeared during the Renaissance rebuilding and shows how a building originally tied to a service function acquired a palatial, more representative character. On the inner and outer façades, notice the sgraffito and frescoes with biblical and mythological subjects. These are not merely decoration: it was the façades that made the rebuilding legible from both outside and inside, while the restored sections show that the present appearance has been partly assembled from surviving and reinstated fragments.

A separate clue is the upper part of the palace’s outer side. During the reconstruction at the end of the 20th century, the number and arrangement of the windows there were noticeably changed. Therefore, the windows should not be seen as a neutral background to the old painting: they show that even a 16th-century monument has reached us through later decisions by restorers and architects.