The owner razed a unique monument in Klatovsk to the ground. He faces criminal prosecution for the demolition

“We charged a fifty-one-year-old man with misdemeanor property abuse. If found guilty, he faces up to two years in prison,” said Klatovsk police spokesman Michal Schön.

The expert set a price of 200,000 crowns for the property itself, but its cultural and historical value is much higher. According to preservationists, the unauthorized demolition led to the irreversible and complete destruction of an authentic historical building, a typical part of local agricultural estates for the region.

“The building was a very good and remarkable example of a granary originating from the final phase of the development of these agricultural buildings, when its uniqueness was made up of a facade with pseudo-style elements, especially terracotta mouldings,” noted the preservationists.

News tried to contact the accused man through his employer. “I can ask him if he wants to talk to you. When he calls you,” said the head of the company where the owner of the former monument works. But no one answered.

According to the findings of Novinek, the prosecuted man defended himself by saying that the experts recommended the rapid demolition of the granary, allegedly due to its state of emergency, when it was in danger of collapsing. However, Dana Šillarová from the department of culture of the Klato town hall rejected this unequivocally. “I knew the building personally, it was not in a state of disrepair,” said the clerk.

As she added, the Klatovsk town hall received the impetus for the investigation from the employees of the National Institute of Monuments, who happened to drive by and discovered that the granary was not there. “After consultation with the regional office, we filed a criminal complaint with the police,” Šillarová added.

According to the director of the Memorial Institute in Pilsen, Petr Sokol, it is not very common for a monument to disappear suddenly like this. “There are more frequent cases when the owners of the monument deliberately do not maintain the object for a long time and then, for example, ask for the roof to be torn down. It’s like a salami method,” said Sokol.