Prague Trades Land at the Main Station for the Ground the Philharmonic Stands On

Prague's councillors approved a land swap with Správa železnic on 7 September that hands each side the ground it is short of. The city gives up plots in the cadastral areas of Nové Město and Vinohrady, around the main railway station; it receives plots in Holešovice that it needs in order to build the Vltava Philharmonic. ČTK reported the decision, which the city assembly still has to confirm.

The land is not of equal value, and the balance runs in the city's favour. Under the agreement the difference is set at roughly 152 million crowns including VAT, which Správa železnic will pay Prague. In the other direction the city transfers 2.1 million crowns to the railway organisation as settlement of the difference in price for the easements being established.

Two building sites, one transaction

What the railway wants the Prague land for is the reconstruction of the departure hall at the main station. What the city wants the Holešovice land for is the concert hall.

The Vltava Philharmonic is to rise beside Vltavská metro station to the design of the Danish studio Bjarke Ingels Group, which won the international competition in May 2022. Prague applied for approval of the scheme at the end of August. Construction should begin in 2028 and trial operation in 2033. The building is costed at 12.33 billion crowns before VAT including its equipment, with work on the surroundings adding roughly five billion more before tax. It will have three underground and six above-ground floors, five music halls, and facilities for both the Czech Philharmonic and the Prague Symphony Orchestra FOK.

At the other end of the swap, work is already under way. Repairs to the ceiling of the main station's departure hall started in the middle of July: the 1970s hall takes water from the car park above it and from the magistrála. The consortium of Subterra and Firesta-Fišer is carrying out the job for 290.5 million crowns, and it will run until 2028.

A further stage at the main station is to follow, bundling three things together — the revitalisation of Vrchlického sady, the new Muzeum – Bolzanova tram line, and the reconstruction of the departure hall itself.

What the swap actually removes

Site assembly is the quiet stage of a large public building, and it is where schemes of this size usually lose time. A design competition can be won, an environmental assessment completed and a permit applied for while the promoter still does not own every square metre it intends to build on. Prague applied for approval of the Philharmonic at the end of August; the plots underneath part of it were, on the evidence of this decision, still the railway's a week later.

The neat feature of the arrangement is that neither body has to raise the money to buy out the other. Each holds land the other needs for a project it is already committed to, and the imbalance is settled in cash rather than by one side waiting for the other's budget. The 152 million crowns is the smaller figure in this story by two orders of magnitude, next to the 12.33 billion the building is expected to cost — but it is the figure that turns a design into a site.

It is not finished. The assembly has to confirm the swap before anything changes hands, and until it does, the Philharmonic's permit application covers ground the city does not yet fully own.