Prague 1 Answers the Kampa Rumours Line by Line: No Hidden Design, No Stage, No Cycle Highway

Prague 1 has gathered everything it has to say about the rebuilding of Kampa onto one continuously updated page, and added to it a section headed Truths and untruths, answering the claims now circulating about the project. The district names them: an allegedly hidden design, felling, a stage, a wide cycle path, and the closure of the whole park.

A council publishing a myth-busting page is itself the news here. The procurement fight is over — the chairman of ÚOHS rejected the appeal, confirmed the authority's earlier decision, and that decision became legally final on 10 September 2026, so from the authority's point of view nothing stands in the way of signing with the selected contractor. What has replaced it is an argument about what the drawings contain, which is harder to settle than a tender review because there is no authority to rule on it.

What the district says will not be built

The rebuttal is most useful as a list of negatives. There is no other, hidden revitalisation project: what will be built is the final form of the design by the architect Magdalena Kurfürstová of Studio TAK, which has long been on display on the information panel by the Domeček on Kampa. The resulting scheme keeps the park's present character and its path network. There will be no wide "cycle motorway", no permanent stage, and no seating steps down to the Čertovka.

On greenery, the district says the claim of wholesale shrub clearance is untrue. The growth along the Čertovka is to be sensitively rejuvenated and supplemented with new shrubs; new planting will replace dying growth elsewhere in the park as well, and the green belt around the Odkolkovská garden is to widen. Perennial beds will appear only at selected places — the entrance from Říční street, by the Werich villa, along the flood wall, and around the Miminka sculptures. The space for walking, playing and walking dogs stays as it was.

On closure: the work will proceed in phases, not with the park shut. Access to local institutions and businesses is to be maintained throughout. The detailed schedule and the temporary restrictions attached to each phase will be published once they are finalised with the contractor.

The participation record is the district's main argument

Prague 1's defence against the charge of a hidden project is the public process: participation ran from spring to autumn 2024, with three public meetings including a guided walk with the architect, and nearly 600 people took part in the survey. The design on the panel by the Domeček has been there a long time.

That is a reasonable answer to "nobody was asked", and it is not an answer to "the design has changed since". The district asserts the latter directly — there is no other project — which is the strongest form the claim can take short of publishing the dated drawings side by side. For a scheme that spent months in front of the competition authority and that Prague 1 itself dates the argument over at thirty years, that comparison is the thing a sceptical reader would actually want.

Why the rumours have the shape they do

Look at the five claims the district is answering and they describe a recognisable fear rather than a reading of the plans: that a quiet riverside park in the historic centre is about to be turned into a venue and a thoroughfare. A stage, a cycle highway, stepped seating at the water, cleared undergrowth, fences for a year. Each is a thing that has happened to a park somewhere in Prague.

Which is why the list of negatives matters more than any assurance about intentions. Four of the five answers are specific enough to be checked against the finished park: no permanent stage, no wide cycle route, no steps to the Čertovka, perennial beds at four named locations. The fifth — phased work with access kept — is the one that will be judged in practice, and it depends on the schedule the district is now agreeing with the contractor and has not yet published.

Prague 1 says it is completing the necessary administrative steps and preparing that schedule now. Until it appears, the one thing a Kampa regular wants to know — when the fences go up and where — remains the piece that does not exist.