The eastern front of houses in Hus Square

The house was mentioned even in the year 1507. In this object there started fire, which destroyed the whole town in 1526. The house was renewed in 1531 to 1536. One year later there is mentioned also a frontage. The house has a smooth, triaxial facade. A curly gable is framed with profile ledges. The arcade has two cross fields with crowns and two semicircular arcades. Atypical disposition of the ground floor has on the right in front a hall with a semicircular vault and contact sections, in the middle you can find a late Renaissance solid newel stairs, in the back there is a wide passage with a Baroque segmental arch and blazons. On the left in front there is a hall with a semicircular vault, in the middle you can find a black cuisine, in the back there is an apparently narrower chamber with a semicircular vault and dissentient sections with crowns. The first floor is modern.    

House No. 1225 – meat shops and school – municipal council – club house – information center

This house is former meat shops and a school, later a municipal council and nowadays a club house and a residence of the Municipal Museum director. Topography of this area in the period, when town was being founded, is not clear. Before fire there was a row of four to six houses, from which one was probably a school. 

After the fire, after 1526, there were built wooden meat shops and in their vicinity, in direction towards the church, a wooden school. From the built-up area before the fire only a Gothic cellar remained, which has no relation with disposition of local later walled house.

Nowadays‘ construction is from the later Renaissance, of the years 1589 to 1595. In 1591 the construction developed so far that meat shops started to be used again, however further adaptations continues as far as 1595, since even this year the school was ceremonially dedicated and handed over to the public. It was situated on the first floor of the building.

Probably construction of the meat shops and the school was planned to be separate. The school had to be next to the parsonage, and since in this corner of the square there was already little space, the school was built directly on the meat shops.  

In 1825 the back part was enlarged with the second floor, gables to the square were later lowered. In the back part of the ground floor behind the meat shops there was the slaughter. In 1863 it was cancelled and a new suitable location was being looked for – in the backhouse area behind the monastery, in 1873 in the house 1041 and from 1895, based on suggestion of František Maervart, on the Špitálský Hill in a new building. In 1864 the second floor was elevated even in the front part of the building. In 1874 meat shops were cancelled and butchers cut meat in the arcades, where they had chunks and meat hooks. The last person moving to his own shop was in 1893 František Škvára. Adaptation for the municipal council was done in 1893 together with opening of a new school in Dlouhá (Komenského) street in 1892. 

The building stands freely on the wing of the eastern block of the square, now without arcades. Between this house and the house No. 1224 there is a narrow lane. Both the houses are interconnected with arches. The Renaissance facade of originally one floor building can be seen in illustration of 1850 (see Tomek’s colored illustration in the Rydl’s Chronicle). The building has a big vaulted entrance on the ground floor. At the corner it has a two-wing sun dial with the inscription: Hora ruit, respice finem. Iuste vive et cole Deum. (Hours pass, look to the end. Live rightly and a worship God).

Attics with three windows and volutes on sides were divided by simply profiled ledges from the floor and two triangular gables. Ground floor has the original disposition with the middle aisle and adjoined meat shops. Behind the strong wall it continues with three rooms interconnected with semicircular arcades, which can be accessed from the courtyard. The ground floor is vaulted as the whole with cross fields with crests. The first floor, which was not a long time ago available via the outer staircase from the south side, preserved only original enclosure walls and was probably a simple flat-ceiling triple-tract.

The double roof with the valley in the middle was decorated with a small tower with the bell for calling scholars. Date of cancellation of the small tower is not known. Otherwise the building was of appearance similar with other houses in the square. The school was destroyed by the fire in 1724. During renovation of the building wooden stairs were replaced with the stony staircase.

Improvement of the interior was performed in 1810 to 1814. E.g. the teacher had now a two-room apartment. The building has never been sold, therefore comparison of building costs with the market rate is missing, however the built-in area around responds to the average. The inner equipment misses the expensive Italian chimney above the black cuisine and under-vaulted staircase, but on the other hand this building was equipped with the inner staircase and unlike many bourgeois houses it has thoroughly vaulted ground floor with solid cross vaults.

In 1893 the town hall was cancelled in the house No. 1209 and the municipal council was moved to the building No. 1225, which had been adapted. On the ground floor, where originally meat shops were, there was established a firehouse. This was possible due to high and wide entrance. On the first floor there were situated offices and on the second floor an assembly hall, municipal savings-bank and the income officer.

In 1924 and 1925 the town hall was reconstructed and in the same time also adaptation of the assembly hall was performed. That time wall paintings and inscriptions were discovered referring to the fact that there had been a school in the building for 300 years: Si fas est omnes pariter pereatis avari. (Should justice exist, all of you skinflint will die). At the windows there were written letters with the red chalk: W S P. There were also other inscriptions and paintings, however more destroyed.

In the year 1981 the building was reconstructed. The external staircase stopped to be the communication element, the firehouse was cancelled and the entrance hall was made out of this area, from which the stairs lead to the first floor. Years 1994 and 1995 became symbol of new reconstruction connected with the replacement of the entrance doors, windows, roof and the new facade.

House No. 1226 – Rampart House – Municipal Museum

It was mentioned for the first time in 1539. As the back house No. 1224 it was in 1536 to 1539 adjoined to the late Gothic bastion, which was a part of the municipal ramparts. This period includes elementary body of the house on the ground floor and on the floor. Paintings in the window linings on the first floor are from the second quarter of the 18th century. They have portrait motives in cartouches.

As it was already indicated the house is a part of the semicylindrical rampart bastion. It preserves substance, layouts and vaults of the original one-storey house. The first tract of the ground floor is in form of a semicircular vault over the passage of the backhouse lane behind the house No. 1224. The entrance renaissance hall with the intersection profiled lining of the rectangular portal has a semicircular vault and one cross field with crowns. The hall on the left has a cross field and three sections with crowns in the bastion niche. On the first floor the hall over the passage has a semicircular vault. The room in the outer tract on the left is vaulted via a cross field with sections in the bastion niche. The cellar was probably originally missing.

This house was divided from the house 1224 in 1569.

Not long time ago there was located a municipal archive in this house. Fortunately it was moved to the county archive, since it was affected by the moist environment. In the middle of the 90’s of the 20th century the house was renovated for the municipal museum and permanent exhibition.