Dancing House

The Tancici dum was finished in 1996 to designs by Vlado Milunic and Frank Gehry on a plot that had stood empty since 1945, when the building on it was destroyed in a raid. The design pairs a straight glass-and-concrete block with a narrower tower that pinches in at the waist and leans, its facade of wavy horizontal mouldings suggesting a skirt, so the two read as a dancing couple - the working nickname was Fred and Ginger, which the architects later dropped. It sits in a row of nineteenth-century apartment blocks on the Vltava embankment, and the argument about whether it belongs there has never entirely stopped in Prague, which is part of why it is worth seeing. It holds offices, a hotel, and a rooftop bar and terrace open to the public with a view along the river. Vaclav Havel lived next door and supported the project.

History

The site held an apartment building destroyed in 1945, whose ruins stood until the plot was cleared in 1960. As early as 1986 the architect Vlado Milunić had an idea for it, which he talked over with his neighbour, the playwright Václav Havel, whose family had once owned the house next door; a few years later Havel, now president, backed developing the site. The Dutch insurer Nationale-Nederlanden agreed to sponsor a building and chose Milunić as lead designer, asking him to work with a second architect of world standing: Jean Nouvel turned it down as too small, Frank Gehry accepted, and from their first meeting in Geneva in 1992 they developed Milunić's idea of a building in two parts, one static and one dynamic. Designed in 1992 and built by BESIX, it was finished in 1996. Gehry first called it Ginger and Fred, after Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, but later dropped the name for fear of importing Hollywood kitsch to Prague (Wikipedia, Dancing House).

The main sights

• Two towers as a couple - one straight, one pinched and leaning under a wavy facade.
• A wartime empty plot - the site had stood vacant since 1945.
• A rooftop terrace - open to the public with a view along the Vltava.
• A continuing argument - Prague has never settled whether it fits.

When to go

All year. Two hours.

Practical notes

The interior is offices and a hotel - only the rooftop bar and a small gallery are open, and the bar is priced accordingly. It is a building to look at from the embankment or the bridge.

Nearby

The National Theatre is upstream; Vysehrad is downstream along the embankment.

Key facts