The golden facade you're standing in front of now nearly vanished before most Praguers ever set foot inside it. The National Theatre opened on June 11, 1881, funded entirely by public donations collected over 30 years. Czechs from every walk of life gave what they could, coin by coin, in what became the largest grassroots cultural campaign in Europe. Crown Prince Rudolf was in the audience for the premiere of Smetana's opera Libuše. Then, after just 11 performances, catastrophe struck.
On August 12, workers finishing the roof poured hot coals into a gutter. Rain began falling at 5 o'clock, something ignited, and the copper dome collapsed into the auditorium. Strong winds and residual gas in the pipes turned it into a full inferno. Sculptor Bohuslav Schnirch, whose trigas you can spot on the roof today, was among the first to rush in and fight the flames. The architect, Josef Zítek, was wrongly blamed and never entered the building again.
What happened next is arguably more remarkable than the fire itself. Within 47 days, Czechs donated 1 million gulden, faster than the original three-decade campaign. The poorest gave the most. By November 1883, the theatre reopened with electric lighting and the very same opera.
Smetana's Libuše. Just a different architect taking the bow.
Stop 7 of 8Vltava Stories67 min walk · 8 stories · Free
Sources. Story: https://www.narodni-divadlo.cz/en/about-us, https://prague.eu/en/objevujte/national-theatre-narodni-divadlo/, https://www.visitczechia.com/en-us/things-to-do/places/culture/c-prague-national-theatre Photos: A.Savin, FAL, via Wikimedia Commons
