Fire at Vystaviste - Prague exhibition ground

On Thursday 16th of October, a catastrophe happened in Prague. There was a big fire in a precious historical building of Industrial Palace (Prumyslovy palac) in Vystaviste area in Prague 7. The fire completely destroyed the left (west) wing of the palace.

The fire was the most probably caused by an explosion at one of the stalls which were at the building because there was held dentist fair trade called Pragodent. But how and why explosion happened is quite unclear. Was it just an accident? There were also some speculations, that the fire was somehow connected with the Kockas family, who hires offices in Vystaviste and organizes here “Matejska pout”, popular event with various attractions. Vaclav Kocka, the younger, was shot a week before the fire, during the baptism of the book written by Jiri Paroubek, the leader of the political party CSSD. So are those just a speculations and the fire was only a very bad accident or there are really some connections with the events of the week before?

However it was, there is now hard work to be done, because the Palace should be renovated, and the burn wing should look exactly how it looked before, it is going to be difficult and expensive. But the palace is a heritage site of high importance.

The palace was built for the big exhibition in 1891 by the architect Bedrich Munzberger. For the same exhibition was also built such famous things as Petrin tower, Petrin funicular or Krizik’s fountain. The industrial palace was since then used mainly for exhibitions and fair trades. It was quite magnificent building, so lets hope that the renovation is going to be successful.


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