An imposing palace with a Baroque facade dominating Palacký Square, has stood witness to the town‘s very beginnings. Archaeological findings show that a tower house had stood here at the end of the 13^th century. Its Gothic tower was used for both residential purposes and defence, as the complex included a production facility where silver had probably been smelted. Other structures were subsequently added to this “base“. But we know very little about them or their owners. The main focal point of the house‘s construction dates back to the end of the 15^th century. In 1481, it was bought by the goldsmith Beneš, who later assumed the predicate “of Trmice“. He was one of Kutná Hora’s important personalities at that time, but financial difficulties forced him to sell his beautiful house to Sankturin of Nedvojovice, with the house paradoxically called after him, and continues to bear this name to the present day. 

Artistically, the most valuable part of the house is an intimate chapel on the second floor of the tower. The author of the stone tracery vault was probably master Briccius Gauske sometime shortly after 1491. A monumental fresco has been preserved on the chapel wall, depicting the front facade of the palace and the landscape, a view of the town and a group of people in the background. Interpretation of this fresco and its connection to the wall paintings in Smíšek’s chapel in the Cathedral of St Barbara is still the subject of speculations and hypotheses.

The house also underwent more extensive building modifications in 1787-1793, resulting in a new facade and a mansard roof, which characterises it to the present day. This modification transformed the original Gothic palace to a dignified burgher's house. 

text © PhDr. Helena Štroblová

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