4:30 p.m.– 6 p.m.

Lecture by Marek Zágora. Only in Czech.

The lecture will be streamed live on Facebooku and the gallery’s YouTube channel.

Villard de Honnecourt is famous for the 33 parchment sheets with around 250 drawings that have been preserved in his sketchbook. There are no official records of him – either in contracts, guild documents, or accounts connected with craftsmen. We do not know when he was born, what education he received, what his profession was, when or where he died. Besides architecture, he was also interested in sculpture and decorative arts. Most of the identifiable buildings depicted in his sketchbook date from before 1240, so we can deduce that he was active during the 1220s and 1230s. He was not an architect, but more likely an inquisitive layman who travelled widely and entrusted his observations to parchment. Some of his drawings are precise, while others are mere impressions; the architecture is often different from that of the actual buildings. His technical sketches are inaccurate, inconsistent and contradictory – yet his sketchbook is nevertheless an absolutely exceptional source. 

Booking advance necessary  

free entrance