The Prague municipality plans to close free access to the Paternoster lift on the ground floor of the New Town Hall on Mariánské náměstí and to start charging an entrance fee for visiting it. The city councilors approved the tender for the renovation of the building’s interior today. In April, the municipality temporarily shut down the elevator due to the rush of tourists who came to see the technical monument and ride in it.
Páternoster appeared in the Honest Guide video guide to Prague a few years ago. Around that time, the number of tourists who went to the publicly accessible town hall building in search of an interesting technical monument began to increase. It was not unusual for dozens of people to gather on the ground floor near the elevator during the day.
The authority said in April that tourists did not respect safety instructions, the excessive load destroyed the elevator and the movement of a large number of people in the building complicated the operation of the town hall.
With the new measure, he wants to solve the problem while maintaining the possibility of seeing the Paternoster. “The proposed modifications will allow people to enter for the purpose of visiting the lift of the Paternoster, without disrupting the normal operation of the building as an administrative building,” the approved document states.
According to the material, the elevator will be separated by corridor walls made according to the oak glass walls located on the second floor of the building. Part of the modifications will be the placement of a payment terminal and a QR code reader on the turnstiles at the back entrance to the town hall, which is located right next to the elevator. The city company Prague City Tourism is in charge of choosing the entrance fee.
“Among other benefits can be mentioned the improvement of the climatic situation of the building in the heating season, when the area of the elevator of the paternoster will be separated from the rest of the building, and thus the chimney effect, which occurs through the elevator shaft of the elevator, will be interrupted,” the document reads. The municipality will issue a tender for the modifications with an estimated value of 2.7 million crowns without VAT.
A Páternoster is a type of elevator with a continuous chain of cabins. The first circular elevator in the world was installed in 1884 in London. Páternosters are now no longer classified as elevators, but as other machinery. They are therefore not subject to the standards for lifts and can continue to be operated.
In Prague, there are a number of preserved paternosters, in addition to the municipality, for example, in the Prague 1 City Hall building in Vodičková street, in several ministry buildings, in the headquarters of the Czech Radio in Vinohradská street or in the Škoda Palace in Jungmannová street. The list of functional paternosters is compiled on wikipedia and on the page paternostery.
