With its exaggerated pink overlay and numerous statues, this exuberant building, built in 1765 from Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer's design, is considered one of Prague's finest rococo, late-baroque structures. The façade looks extravagant when contrasted with the somber baroque elements of other nearby buildings. (The interior, however, was "modernized" under Communism.) The palace once contained a German school—where Franz Kafka studied for nine misery-laden years—and presently holds the National Gallery's graphics collection. Communist leader Klement Gottwald, flanked by comrade Vladimír Clementis, first addressed the crowds after seizing power in February 1948 from this building—an event recounted in the first chapter of Milan Kundera's novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.
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