Czech Post has again offered to sell former St Gabriel’s monastery in the Prague’s district of Smíchov. The minimum bid for the monastery, based on an expert’s opinion, is CZK 353,350,000.

Prospective buyers can inspect the premises during one of the four specified days before the electronic auction takes place on 19 September 2019 at 9 a.m. More details and the technical specification are available on Czech Post’s website at https://www.ceskaposta.cz/o-ceske-poste/prodej-a-pronajem-nemovitosti and the sale is posted on the Sreality website at https://www.sreality.cz/detail/prodej/komercni/ostatni-komercni-prostory/praha-cast-obce-smichov-ulice-holeckova/3890712156#img=0&fullscreen=false.

 

Additional information:

The former monastery was bought by the Czechoslovak government through the Ministry of Post and Telegraph Offices after 1919, for CZK 3.5 million from the owners Karel and Alois Löweinstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg. The premises were used as the seat of the newly created Postal Cheque Office (Postal Savings Bank from 1930) until its relocation to the new building on Wenceslas Square in 1931. The empty premises of the monastery were assigned to the Postal Museum, established by the Ministry of Post and Telegraph Offices on 18 December 1918. The museum used them for a new extensive exposition, opened on 3 February 1932, including not only exhibition rooms but also an archive, library, repositories, and staff offices. However, the project of using the former monastery to build a permanent seat for the museum was thwarted soon after World War II when most of the premises were allocated to the Postal Money Order Centre (PPÚ), established in the early 1919. The reason for the allocation was the boom in the use of money orders, which replaced bank transfers between businesses and individuals after the nationalisation and significant slimming down of the banking sector. The growing extent of transactions managed by the Postal Money Order Centre (Postal Computer and Control Centre, or VAKUS from 1 April 1963) meant that in the years to come, the centre spread to occupy most of the premises. This continued until 1998 when the Prague branch of VAKUS merged with the Vítkov branch of VAKUS in the Opava district and the centre vacated the former monastery. The premises were then occupied by the Prague Postal Headquarters until shortly after 2010. The Postal Museum remained the last resident of the former monastery until its departure in the late 2016.

 

Matyáš Vitík,

Spokesman,

Česká pošta, s.p.

vitik.matyas@cpost.cz