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Piarist Grammar School Building

Piarist Grammar School Building

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Bishop Karl II of Liechtenstein-Castelcorn had the Piarist grammar school built in 1694–1698 to a design by the architect Giovanni Pietro Tencalla. The top floor was added in 1851. The richly articulated main portal bears in its gable a stone cartouche with the bishop's coat of arms and a cartouche with a Latin inscription which translates as: "From here may this ingenious work speak everywhere through its renown."

From the 17th to the 19th century the Piarist grammar school was one of the most important secondary schools in the Czech lands, with teaching in Latin and German. Many distinguished teachers worked here, among them the historian Adolf Pilař, who wrote a three-volume Latin history of Moravia with František Moravec, the scholar and national reviver Gelasius Dobner, the naturalist František Xaver Veselý, the philosopher Bonifác Buzek and Ondřej Rettig, son of Magdalena Dobromila Rettigová.

In 1879 the building passed to the town and housed a German grammar school. After that school was closed, the building was converted into flats in 1918.

The building is part of the Kroměříž urban heritage reserve.

Interesting places nearby

Church of St John the Baptist

Masarykovo náměstí, 767 01 Kroměříž

Baroque Piarist church from 1737–1768 with an oval domed nave and two towers, often called the high point of Baroque architecture in Moravia.

P. J. Vejvanovský Conservatory

Pilařova 7/1, 767 01 Kroměříž

A music conservatory in the Baroque building of the former Piarist college, directly adjoining the Church of St John the Baptist in the centre of Kroměříž.

Call

Max Švabinský's Birthplace

Jánská 15/11, 767 01 Kroměříž

The house on Jánská Street where the painter and printmaker Max Švabinský was born on 17 September 1873. For generations it housed soap-making workshops.