The devastation of the Old Town Hall became a symbol of the May Uprising in 1945 in Prague. The town hall was established by a decree of King John the Blind in 1338 as the administrative and judicial seat of Prague Old TownVáclav Vojtíšek, Pohroma Staroměstské radnice. In: Bohumil Hypšman, Sto let Staroměstského rynku a radnice, Pražské nakladatelství Václava Poláčka, Praha, 1946, díl I, p. 19., in the pre-existing Gothic house of Volflin od Kamene (Volflin from the Stone). The town hall gradually spread to neighbouring houses. Those on the northern side from the tower were pulled down in the 19th century and replaced by a Neo-Gothic building after plans by Petr Nobile and Pavel Sprenger, finished in 1848.On the history of the town hall see for example: KB (ZV) [Klára Benešovská (Zuzana Všetečková)], čp. 1/I, in: Pavel Vlček a kol., Umělecké památky Prahy. Staré Město, Josefov, Academia, Praha, 1996, pp. 136–150; Karel Kibic, Staroměstská radnice v Praze, in: Staletá Praha V, Orbis, Praha, 1971, pp. 33–63; Jiřina Hořejší – Petr Heřman, PRAGA CAPUT REGNI. Glosy ke kulturní historii Staroměstské radnice, in: Staletá Praha XIX. Praha bojující, 1989, pp. 33–53. In November 1941 both the town hall and the municipality office was taken over by the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

During the May Uprising the insurgents got hold of the town hall on 5 May 1945. In the morning Czech officials announced that they were taking over the administration of the city, and Czech policemen together with the city guard officers began disarming the German staff.Stanislav Kokoška, Praha v květnu 1945. Historie jednoho povstání. Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, Praha, 2005, s. 121. The town hall became one of the focal points of the anti-fascist resistance and thus it was one of the main targets of German combat units. On 5 May, the town hall building was battered and battles for Old Town Square continued for the next two days. Shelling from self-propelled artillery batteries placed on Letná Hill caused a devastating fire in the town hall on the last day of the Uprising. The fire was finally extinguished on 9 May.“When Germans lost everything, they expressed their intense hatred for Czech Prague by setting the town hall on fire and burning its deformed body. The art-historically valuable interiors together with a large part of the city archive and the entire archive library fell victim to the ferocious fire.” Antonín Matějček, Umělecké ztráty Prahy ve dnech 5. až 8. května 1945, in: Pražská květnová revoluce 1945, Hlavní město Praha, Praha, 1946, p. 77. On the fire see also : Oldřich Mahler, Po stopách květnového povstání v Praze, in: Staletá Praha XIX. Praha bojující, 1989, pp. 18–19; Václav Vojtíšek, Pohroma Staroměstské radnice, in: Bohumil Hypšman, Sto let Staroměstského rynku a radnice, Pražské nakladatelství Václava Poláčka, Praha, 1946, díl I, p. 28. On German air raid bombing during the uprising see also: Michal Plavec – Filip Vojtášek, Bomby na Květnou neděli. Letecká válka nad Prahou a okolím v březnu až květnu 1945, Svět křídel, Cheb, 2012, pp. 281–293; Josef Voříšek, Praha 1945: očima fotografa, Svět křídel, Cheb, 2013, p. 57. K požáru také Oldřich Mahler, Po stopách květnového povstání v Praze, in: Staletá Praha XIX. Praha bojující, 1989 pp. 18–19. Altogether 19 insurgents were killed during the battles for the town hall.Jiří Padevět, Průvodce protektorátní Prahou. Místa – události – lidé, Academia, Praha, 2013, p. 261.

The fire destroyed a part of the city archive – an important source for the history of Prague and its monuments. Most of it was located on the 1st floor of the Neo-Gothic town hall complex and another part, a photographic studio, was located on the 2nd floor.See http://www.ahmp.cz/povstani/ (accessed 19. 6. 2017). In terms of Prague history, the loss of archival documents was a cruel addition to the battles at the end of the war.See Václav Vojtíšek, Archiv hlavního města Prahy. O jeho vývoji, sbírkách a významu, Melantrich, Praha, 1933; Václav Vojtíšek, Pohroma Staroměstské radnice, in: Bohumil Hypšman, Sto let Staroměstského rynku a radnice, Pražské nakladatelství Václava Poláčka, Praha, 1946, díl I, p. 32 (contains a specific list of losses in the archive): „Even the most secure iron cabinet, set in the wall of the tower, was full of dust and ash after it was opened.” Vojtíšek, an avid archivist, who documented the history of the town hall in a number of important publications, considered the losses in the archive to be irreplaceable. In the Neo-Gothic wing of the town hall, the Mayor's office designed by Jan Kotěra burned down as well. See also Oldřich Mahler, Po stopách květnového povstání v Praze, in: Staletá Praha XIX. Praha bojující, 1989 pp. 18–19. Václav Vojtišek, historian and archivist, described the loss in 1946: “The Old Town Hall will rise from the wrecks through the Czech labour and Czech enthusiasm and it will live to see new famous battles, but the city archive will bear the terrible wound, which will never heal and generations after generations will cry about.” Václav Vojtíšek, Pohroma Staroměstské radnice, in: Bohumil Hypšman, Sto let Staroměstského rynku a radnice, Pražské nakladatelství Václava Poláčka, Praha, 1946, díl I, p. 34.

North from the present town hall, the bomb-site left by the former Neo-Gothic wing, pulled down in 1948, remains as an eloquent testimony to the losses of the war. Competitions from 1946, 1965, 1967 and 1987 show various attempts to complete the building of the town hall.Rostislav Švácha, Období po druhé světové válce, in: Pavel Vlček a kol., Umělecké památky Prahy. Staré Město, Josefov, Academia, Praha, 1996, p. 47: “… the site has remained an open wound in the unique Gothic plan of central Prague”. After the last competition, the entire fifth issue of Umění magazine was devoted to the town hall in 1988. The architect Milan Pavlík published a text analyzing the historical state of the town hall which he considered as a “torso” awaiting completion; Milan Pavlík, Obnova historické budovy Staroměstské radnice, in: Staletá Praha. Královská cesta, roč. XXI, 1991, pp. 163–175. Although the site has not been replaced with new architecture to the present day, the possibility is still actively discussed, by the town council and the general public.Discussions about the last competition were still taking place in 2004: see  Kateřina Bečková, „Dostavba Staroměstské radnice čeká na nové koncertní provedení. Rozhovor s architekty Františkem Kašičkou a Milanem Pavlíkem“, in: Zprávy památkové péče 64, no. 5, 2004, pp. 398–400. In 2010, Regina Loukotová focused on the issue of the competitions in her essay, “The building has never been built again (The role of the public in eight architectural competitions for the completion of the Old Town Hall in Prague)” presented at the conference Crossroads of Architecture. In 2011 a new student competition for the completion of the town hall took place within the workshop Gočár is looking, Rojkind will guide you with the Mexican architect Michel Rojkind (see https://zpravy.aktualne.cz/domaci/staromestska-radnice-architektura-soutez-praha/r~i:gallery:18196/, accessed 11. 7. 2017). At present (2017), the completion of the town hall is unlikely – one of the reasons is the lack of a central role that such a building should fulfill (I thank Rostislav Švácha for the information).

Josef Sudek presented a symbol of both Prague and the May Uprising in a large number of photographs which gives us detailed knowledge about one of the last material victims of the Second World War.