Lucerna Palace — Great Hall

Lucerna’s Great Hall has three levels beneath the arcade and is 9 metres high, 54 metres long and 25.5 metres wide. The dance floor used for balls covers an area of 42 × 16 metres. For concerts, up to 4,000 people can be seated in the stalls and on the balconies. The hall unfortunately suffers from insufficient ventilation.

history

In 1921, a bronze bust by the sculptor Jan Štursa of Lucerna’s founder and builder, Ing. Václav Havel, was installed at the entrance to the hall. Today it once again stands in its original place. Throughout the years, the hall has been used for social, cultural and sporting purposes, particularly concerts by distinguished artists. Past performers have included members of the New York Philharmonic conducted by Arturo Toscanini, the cellist Pablo Casals, violinists Jan Kubelík, Jaroslav Kocián, Josef Suk and Yehudi Menuhin, opera singers Fyodor Chaliapin, Ema Destinnová and Otakar Mařák, the French chansonnier Maurice Chevalier, and the American dancer Josephine Baker, to name but a few.

After the Second World War, the hall hosted concerts by the American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, the American singer and trumpeter Louis Armstrong, the American singer Ray Charles, the French chanson performers Yves Montand, Lucienne Boyer and Gilbert Bécaud, and the orchestras of Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman. Its guests also included the Indian poet and Nobel Prize laureate Rabindranath Tagore, while the wrestling arena saw appearances by Franta Nekolný and Gustav Frištenský. During the totalitarian era, however, the hall also hosted communist and youth organisation conferences and congresses. The Lucerna Palace is now owned by Dagmar Havel, the wife of Ivan Havel, Václav Havel’s brother.