“The work will last until the end of September, the main part, the floor, should be completed during August, the beginning of September,” said Jan Pastor, a spokesman for the Prague Castle Administration, yesterday in the middle of a large space. The chandeliers in the hall are carefully wrapped in plastic so that they do not suffer during the reconstruction.
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Repair for 35 million
The parquets are made of oak wood and are decorated with the so-called Viennese cross. They cover an area of 1300 square meters.
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More than 15,000 screws were used to level the floor below them. They last changed in the 1970s.
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“150 tons of material containing asbestos fibers were mined,” the spokesman said. Dangerous asbestos traveled to special landfills under strict safety conditions.
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“The whole logistics is the most difficult. We are limited by space, we weigh and tie the material through the windows, elevator, “said Michal Pokorný from the company that performs the work. “Parquets will be sanded twice more and varnished twice,” he added.
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Restoration work is also underway in the Presidential Lounge and the East and West Hall. 4,500 slices of metal, a metal foil of copper and zinc two thousandths of a millimeter thick, were used for the stucco decoration. The door and mirror frame are decorated with real gold. The price of repairs is almost 35 million crowns.
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The Spanish Hall boasts dimensions of 47 × 24 meters and a ceiling height of 12 meters. It was founded at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries during the reign of Emperor Rudolf II. for his collection of sculptures. Only later did he serve ceremonial court occasions. It got its name thanks to the noble Spanish horses, which were housed directly below it. Today, there is a picture gallery on site.
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In the 1950s, coffins with the remains of communist presidents Klement Gottwald and Antonín Zápotocký were exhibited in it. Since the 1970s, the Central Committee of the Communist Party has met on the spot, adopted, for example, Lessons from the Crisis Development, and thus began the process of normalization in Czechoslovakia.
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Two thousand light bulbs
During the joint meetings of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, the Presidents of the Czech Republic Václav Havel and Václav Klaus were elected here. Since the 1990s, it has once again served representational and cultural purposes.
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The space is lit by over 2000 light bulbs. A special lighting system with built-in dimmers, thanks to which it is possible to regulate the intensity of lighting, was donated to Havel in 1995 by the British group Rolling Stones.
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