Civic Centre, Kratzau, Czech Republic

Derelict Places

Help Support Derelict Places:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

fallstern

Member
Joined
Jul 13, 2010
Messages
19
Reaction score
37
Location
Liberec (Reichenberg), Northern Bohemia, Czech Rep
Hello everyone, and welcome to yet another of my reports.
This time, I ventured to the town of Kratzau, specifically to its abandoned civic center.
Its construction started in the late 80s, but was halted after a year due to insufficient funding. It was supposed to fulfill the role of a cinema, a theatre and a general community center, but was never actually opened for this puropse. Instead, the unfinished building was purchased by a local enterpreneur, a boxing champion who wanted to turn it into a boxing gym. However, even his finances ran dry after a few months and the building remains there until now, derelict and yet unfinished.
Being a rather loathsome scar on the town's face, the Council had the edifice scheduled for demolition, which will commence in 14 days. This is probably the last set of photos taken without omnipresent workers and machines, and soon enough, nobody will even remember the building.

Enough history for now, here are the pictures:

This is the building form the outside. Not quite as majestic as it could be.


The entrance. The yellow sign says "do not enter", obviously.


The main hall. Even though it's April 1st, it was snowing quite a bit when I arrived. The glass panels in the roof are smashed to oblivion and the effect that the falling snow makes in this somehow dim light was astonishing.


Turning left, we see the remnants of the central stage. Notice the metal scvaffolding over it...


This was most probably the projectionist's booth, as it is several meters above ground and directly opposite the stage.


This is the big-ass window directly opposite the entrance. Taken from the 1st floor. The lighting here must have been astonishing.


The stage once again, from a different perspective - the projection booth is now directly behind me.


1st floor room with mysterious purpose.


This narrow hall runs around the perimeter of the stage hall and connects the projection booth with the metal scaffolding.


And the saffolding itself. Most likely designed for lighting electricians and other general staff. Note that the gaps used to be covered with wooden planks, creating a catwalk. I did not summon the courage to actually step on the rusty thing, so my apologies.


This secondary stairacase will take you to the main hall. Notice the tall window - probably the architect's favorite kind of window, as there are like five of them on this building. Most of them smashed to bits, of course.


A glimpse of the cahrming, cozy 1st floor hall.


And the enormous main window once again, this time from the bottom.


Anyway, that's pretty much it for this hunt. The building is not as colossal, as complicated or as interesting as other, older ones in the general vicinity, but is by far the easiest to reach.

And furthermore: there is an abandoned Chernobyl-style 70s housing block just next to it, also derelict and abandoned. Unfortunately, I did not have the time to take any decent photos of this block, so I will make it the subject of a later, more detailed report. It is even less interesting than this civic centre, but has a certain "Soviet" atmosphere that makes it quite a catch.

Thank you for your attention and see you next time.
 
Last edited:

Latest posts

Back
Top