Praha 2 Will Pave the Lawn Tourists Stand On to Photograph the Dancing House

Jiráskovo náměstí is to be rebuilt, and the stated reason is the behaviour of the people standing on it. Prague Morning reported on 6 October that Praha 2 intends to carry out a redesign of the square over the next two years at an estimated cost of around CZK 35 million, replacing part of the lawn with paving, restoring a historic fountain and relocating the monument to Alois Jirásek. The scheme follows a 2022 study by the archiF studio. Praha 2's own pages are not reachable from here, so every figure below rests on Prague Morning's account.

The damage is the brief

The square sits directly opposite the Dancing House, which makes it the standing place for the building's photograph. Visitors step onto the grass to get the frame, and one of the commonest poses has them appearing to prop up or kick the building with a foot. The grass has been heavily damaged by the repeated footfall and attempts to restore it have not held.

The response is to stop defending the ground and pave it. Part of the lawn becomes a durable paved surface that takes the photographers, which is intended to relieve the pressure on the greenery that remains. A raised edge around the lawn doubles as seating. The northern part of the square gets new flowerbeds and trees, and shrubs judged unsuitable for the position are removed. The Jirásek monument — the square carries the writer's name — moves to the centre of the small park.

Paving over a lawn is the kind of decision that reads as a loss until you look at what is being lost. There is no version of this square in which a few thousand people a week stand somewhere else; the only choice was between grass that is reliably bare and a surface designed for the use the place actually gets.

Hofman's fountain comes back

The second half of the project is restoration rather than management. The square holds a Cubist fountain by the architect Vlastislav Hofman. Under the scheme the ground around it is repaved and the fountain itself is returned to its original appearance and to working order.

What makes that possible is archival. Soňa Formanová, an architect and one of the project's authors, said the team located Hofman's original documentation, including drawings covering the fountain and the approaches to the nearby bridge. A restoration carried out from the author's own drawings is a different proposition from one carried out from photographs, and it is the detail in Prague Morning's account most worth holding onto: it means the fountain can be put back as designed rather than as remembered.

It also quietly widens the project. Hofman's drawings for the bridge approaches describe ground beyond the fountain's basin, which is to say the square was designed once, as a composition, by the same hand. Nothing in the report says Praha 2 intends to follow those drawings any further than the fountain. But a district that has found them will be asked about the rest.

What is not yet known

The reporting gives a budget, a two-year horizon and a design origin four years back, and that is the extent of it. There is no procurement stage, no contractor, no start date, no named district official and no breakdown of the CZK 35 million between paving, fountain and planting. A 2022 study reaching implementation in 2026 and 2027 is a normal pace for a district square, not a fast one, and the gap is long enough that the costing deserves a second look when the district publishes it.