Cultural Heritage: Architecture, Art, Monuments, Museums and UNESCO Sites
Reading buildings by style
A guide must identify style from evidence, not from the label on the ticket. Romanesque: massive walls, small windows, round arches, rotundas and basilicas (St George's Basilica, Prague). Gothic: pointed arch, rib vault, flying buttress, verticality (St Vitus, Charles Bridge founded 1357, Vladislav Hall). Renaissance: symmetry, sgraffito, arcaded courtyards (Telč, Litomyšl, Kroměříž). Baroque: movement, dome, illusion, gilded altars (Dientzenhofer, Santini's Baroque Gothic, the Charles Bridge statues). Then Neoclassicism, Art Nouveau (Municipal House), Czech Cubism (House at the Black Madonna) and Functionalism (Villa Tugendhat by Mies van der Rohe, 1930; Baťa's Zlín).
UNESCO and museums
Czechia has 17 World Heritage entries, from Prague, Český Krumlov and Telč (1992) through the Tugendhat Villa (2001), Třebíč (2003) and Český ráj (2005) to Kladruby stud farm and the Krušnohoří mining region (2019), the Great Spa Towns including Karlovy Vary, Mariánské Lázně and Františkovy Lázně (2021) and the Žatec hop landscape (2023). The Prague Monument Reserve dates from 1971; the National Museum and the Museum of Decorative Arts anchor the museum landscape.
Traps: Telč is Renaissance, not Baroque; Holašovice is rural Baroque; Santini is Baroque Gothic; Loos designed the Müller Villa, Mies van der Rohe the Tugendhat.
Worked example: three features - pointed arch, rib vault, tall windows - give Gothic, so date the building 13th–15th century and look for later Baroque altars inside.
Rule of thumb: name style from three visible features, then name one date and one architect.