Municipal House

The Municipal House is a dominant building at the end of Ostrožná Street built in 1911 when the local branch of the Austro-Hungarian Bank, which had its seat in today’s Masarykova Avenue, bought a house that had belonged to a banker Konrád Krappe with the intent to build a new bank in the place of the old house.

The author of the project was the architect Rudolf Eisler from Vienna. The building was in concord with the urbanistic concept of the former town architect Eduard Labitzký, who designed a circular road around the town centre. The bank was another addition to a row of public buildings and schools in the area starting with the savings bank and finishing with the building of the Chamber of Business and Commerce. The building was meant to become a part of a new concept of Ostrožná Street. The plan was never realised, though. The new bank also symbolically emphasized the representative character of the Silesian capital. The construction, which started in 1914 and took four years due to war events, was realized by Alois Geldner’s construction company.

Eisler, who studied under Fridrich Ohmann at the academy in Vienna, designed the building in a Baroque-revival style with Neo-Classicist features influenced by Wagner’s modernism as well as Neo-Biedermeir style. The three-storey building has two perpendicular wings and a small yard in the north. The triaxial facade facing Ostrožná Street is segmented by an avant-corps and two ionic pillars. There are four more pillars in the south supporting a massive moulding between the second and third floor. Above the carved door there is a balcony with statues by an unknown author depicting the god of commerce Mercury and the goddess of bounty and fertility Ceres with two children on the side. There is one more statue of Ceres outside the main entrance to the building. The statue used to stand in the City Gardens. On the ground floor of the bank there used to be a flat. The central staircaise with a rectangular space led to the bank on the first loor. On the second floor there was a flat of the bank director.

The bank was heavily damaged at the end of World War II and had to undergo reconstruction. The historical value of the building was diminished due to insensitive construction interventions in the 1960s and 1980s. In the 1960s the building housed Státní banka československá, and from 1990 a branch of Komerční banka. In 2005 the Statutory Town of Opava bought the building to use it for cultural purposes. In 2008–2009 the building underwent a complete reconstruction with respect to its original state. The facade and its ornamental features were renovated, glazed ceramic roofing replaced the metal roofing and the area around the building was upgraded. The interior of the building was reconstructed in accord with the conservation regulations. The staircase and the hall were restored to its original state.  Today the Municipal House is the seat of Opava Cultural Organization. In the basement there is Klub Art, on the first floor there are Sál purkmistrů (Mayors’ Hall) and a café, on the second floor there is a permanent exhibition of the history of Opava, and on the third floor there is a gallery and Schösslerův salónek (Schössler’s Lounge).