National Monument in Vitkov

The National Monument on top of the Žižkov Vítkov hill in Prague belongs among the most important buildings connected to the development of Czechoslovak/Czech statehood.

It includes the equestrian statue of Jan Žižka, the third largest bronze equestrian statue in the world. The statue was built in honor of Jan Žižka, who in 1420 at this hill defeated Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor. The Monument also includes the Ceremonial Hall, an exhibition entitled Crossroads of Czech and Czechoslovak Statehood, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and other exhibition halls.

The Monument was built in the years 1928–1938 in honour of the Czechoslovak legionaries. After 1948, it was used to promote the communist regime. Between 1954-1962 the mausoleum of Klement Gottwald was placed there. In 2000, the National Monument in Vitkov was acquired by the National Museum, which conducted a major restoration work. After over two years of reconstruction, the Memorial was opened to the public on October 29, 2009.

The History of Vitkov Hill
Vitkov has always attracted Prague's citizens and is linked with important events in Czech history. The first written mention of Vitkov dates back to the 14th century, to the time of Charles IV, who had vineyards planted on the hills around Prague. The vineyards stretched from the foot of Vitkov through Vinohrady to Karlov. Besides grapes, Vitkov hill was also used for the cultivation of hops.

Vitkov played a major role in the Hussite wars. In April and May 1420, Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor led a crusading army against the Hussite movement. As Sigismund proceeded towards Prague, the representatives of the city decided to stand against Sigismund and asked Tábor and other Hussite-controlled boroughs for help. Sigismund seized Hradcany and Vysehrad while the Hussite forces controlled Vitkov. The decisive battle took place on 14 July 1420 when the Hussite forces defeated the crusader army.

In the latter half of the 19th century, Czech nationalism displayed in historical places, among them Žižkov quarter and Vitkov hill. In 1877, the town of Kralovske Vinohrady I was renamed to Žižkov, as Jan Žižka of Trocnov, leader of the radical Hussites, was perceived as the symbol of the fight for Czech interests. In 1881 Žižkov was promoted to the status of a town. Vitkov was seen as the symbol of the Czechs and the ancient glory of the Czech nation, which obviously led to the idea of building a monument to Žižka here. The initiative for building the monument is attributed to Karel Hartig, the first mayor of Žižkov.

In 1882, the Association for the Construction of the Žižka Monument in Žižkov was established in the hall of the U Deklarace pub. The Association held national celebrations in Žižkov (for instance in 1884) and in 1910 a memorial tablet was unveiled on the hilltop. The Association's most famous act was the announcement of the tender for the Žižka Monument in 1912. No first prize was awarded. The Association's activities were abandoned during World War I.

Establishment of the monument
In 1918 an independent Czechoslovak state was declared. The state consistently supported activities aimed at maintaining and developing the tradition of foreign legions. The Resistance Monument was established within the Ministry of National Defence in May 1919 as an institution whose role it was to collect written and material memorabilia relating to the resistance. In 1920 the Monument became a separate military institute, with colonel Rudolf Medek being the commander. The objective of the Resistance Monument as an institution was to build a structure which would embody celebration and reverence as well as pro-active scientific activities in the field of history, i.e. including an archive, library and museum. At that time the Resistance Monument was already cooperating with the afore-mentioned Association for the Construction of Žižka's Monument in Žižkov. The two institutions merged in 1926, establishing the Union for the Construction of the Liberation Monument and the Monument to Jan Žižka of Trocnov.

Two art contests were held for the design, the more important being the second one in 1925, which assumed separate buildings for the Monument. The first building, located on Vitkov hill, should be a necropolis for prominent representatives of the First Resistance, and the second building at the foot of the hill, now used by the Institute of Military History, was to house the administration and museum. The architect Jan Zazvorka won the first prize in the contest.

The construction of the museum at the foot of the hill was launched in 1927 and completed two years later. The construction of the National Liberation Monument commenced in 1928 when the corner stone was laid on the top of Vitkov Hill in the presence of President T. G. Masaryk to mark the occasion of the 10th anniversary of creation of Czechoslovakia. The shell was completed in 1933 and interior works continued, involving many leading artists.

The monument during World War II
In 1938 the Monument was prepared to officially become state property, which was however precluded by the events following the Munich Conference. Thus the Monument remained property of the Union and the artwork decorations were not fully completed.

When World War II began, the lower buildings of the museum, now the Institute of Military History, were seized by the Germans. The Monument's building escaped the Wehrmacht's attention until November 1942. The administration of the Monument therefore took advantage of this to carry out concealed actions from the autumn of 1939 to the summer of 1940 to save everything valuable, such as metals for casting sculptures, and removed and stored works of art. From November 1942 the Monument was occupied by the German administration and before the end of the war the Wehrmacht used it as a store.

The Equestrian Statue of Jan Žižka of Trocnov
After the First World War, the activities of the "Association for the Construction of Jan Žižka's Monument in Žižkov" were renewed. As early as in June 1920 the cornerstone was laid in the presence of President T. G. Masaryk. In the 1920s several art tenders were held, with no satisfactory results (1923, 1925 and 1928).

The monument was eventually commissioned in 1931 from the sculptor Bohumil Kafka, a professor at Prague's Academy of Visual Arts, outside the tender. The sculpture was supposed to be monumental and realistic. It took Kafka a whole ten years to complete the sculpture, and an advisory board of nine people was established to supervise his work, consisting of specialists, historians and hippologists. For this job, Bohumil Kafka had a new studio built in Ořechovka, Prague, 27 m high and 18 m wide. Firstly began work on model of a horse without the rider. Several men then modelled for the rider part, conceiving the rider's position, body and head. Experts in historical armament provided information not only on the rider's clothing style, but also many details, such as the design of the foot frame. Kafka made a plaster model of Žižka's statue in November 1941 and died shortly afterwards.

The sculpture was cast after the liberation. It was unveiled on 14 July 1950, to mark the anniversary of the Battle of Vitkov. It is tethered to reinforced concrete plugs anchored in the structure of the Monument. The sculpture is 9 m high, 9.6 m long, and weighs 16.5 tons.

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is located underneath the Equestrian Statue. The Czechoslovak Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was originally made in the Old Town Hall in 1922 as a temporary place of piety and contained the remains of an unknown soldier from the Battle of Zborov. At the beginning of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in 1939, the Tomb became a place where people expressed their symbolic resistance against the Nazi power. It was demolished by the German Nazis in 1941.

After World War II, consideration was given to renewing the Tomb and moving it to Vitkov. As part of the 30th anniversary of the Battle of Zborov, the Headquarters of the Czechoslovak Army decided to establish the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the National Monument in Vitkov, which would contain the remains from Zborov, but Soviet embassy officials denied the transfer of those remains. In June 1949 restoration work was underway in the military graveyard near Dukla, and during exhumation work on 14 July 1949 the remains of one of the unknown soldiers were unearthed in the graveyard in Vysny Komarnik. They were transported to Prague and temporarily lodged with the National Museum. On Sunday 9 October 1949, when celebrations of the 5th anniversary of the Battle of the Dukla Pass were at their peak, the remains were moved to the Liberation Monument.

On 8 May 2010 other remains of an unknown soldier from Zborov were put in the Tomb next to the unknown soldier from Dukla, thus fulfilling the original idea of the Monument. The remains are lodged in one of the coffins. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is today perceived in all its breadth and meaning as an expression of thanksgiving to the Czechs and Slovaks who fell in the struggle to liberate the Czech and Czechoslovak state. In 2006 General Alois Eliáš and his wife were also buried here.

The Klement Gottwald Mausoleum
After World War II the renewal of the Monument commenced. Works also began on the new building which was to be used as a tribute to the resistance against Nazism. However, the events of February 1948 brought new ways of using the Monument. Oppression against the legionary tradition broke out in full force in 1950. Following the decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, the Monument of Liberation was converted in a proletariat pantheon, thus changing its ideological function. In 1953 the Central Committee decided to set up the Klement Gottwald Mausoleum in the Monument. Mausoleum lasted here until 1962.

The original layout placed a sarcophagus in the Main Hall as the place where President T. G. Masaryk was to be buried. He eventually rejected the plan, and so did his family after his death. In 1953-1962 this area was given a new function – it was rebuilt into the Klement Gottwald Mausoleum. The Minister of National Defence and Gottwald's son-in-law Alexej Cepicka was in charge of the preparatory works for the conversion. The example came from Moscow (V. I. Lenin, J. V. Stalin) and Sofia (J. Dimitrov). The Mausoleum included technical facilities, described in a separate chapter. The construction work also involved the son of the Monument's key architect, Jan Zazvorka Jr., a film architect.

Klement Gottwald's body was exhibited in the centre of the Mausoleum in a glazed sarcophagus. The lid had built-in lights with small mirrors. The body was moved in and out the underground laboratory by a vibration-free telescopic device. The embalmed body was dressed in a blue general uniform of the Head Commander of Czechoslovak armies. In 1958 it was changed to civilian attire.

The technical facilities for the Klement Gottwald Mausoleum were built in the underground premises of the Monument. The construction of the underground premises was completed in October 1953 and its original design served until Klement Gottwald's cremation in 1962 when the equipment was removed. The only things to have been preserved are the control room and the ground plan for the laboratory.