Latrán Nos. 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 105, špitál sv. Alžběty (former St. Elizabeth's Hospital)

Location:
Latrán č. p. 99, 100, 101, 102, 103 a 105, bývalý špitál sv. Alžběty

Description of the Building:
Long, one story building with an L-shaped floor plan, standing on a rock above Polečnice and connected to the eastern side of the Budějovická gate. The northern face of the house (facing out towards the city) is held by a sgraffito rustic seamlessly attached to the rock. Windows in the first six axes (counting from the gate) have stone lining. The southern face is smooth-surfaced, partially covered by a massive roof bracket with joining beams in the front view. The entrances and some of the windows have stone lining; only fragments of the lining are preserved around several windows. The east wing (No. 99) has a pediment. The double-pitched roof is covered with Spanish tiles.

The interior of No. 99 has a three-part layout with a central corridor and has been radically modernized. The renaissance truss has Andrew\'s crosses and a standing saddle that was inserted later. No. 100 and No. 101 are actually a double-dwelling house with a layout determined by the central common corridor connected to residential quarters with plain ceilings and modern details. A raking arch in a Baroque black kitchen can be found in the house No. 102. The rooms were created by dividing the original large spaces. The windows have segmental funicular arches. All entrances and windows in No. 103 and No. 105 also have the original segmental funicular arches. The older layout of the residential areas is clearer, the ceilings are plain. Constricted barrel arches with lunettes and groins may be found in two rooms near the Budějovická gate.

Truss with a resting saddle was built during Baroque or (more likely) Renaissance.

Architectural and Historical Development:
The oldest part of the complex are the three rooms near the northeastern corner of the building including the room of the former medieval St. Elizabeth\'s chapel and the main infirmary hall. The construction of the city fortifications and Budějovická gate at the very end of the sixteenth century incorporated the complex that had been standing at the side into the organism of the city. Several small houses were built between the chapel and the gate, thus creating three or four rooms with plain ceilings and two vaulted rooms. The hospital\'s entrance hall and the kitchen may have been located in the last two. The kitchen was later moved to No. 102. When the hospital was vacated in 1781, it was divided into three parts and the interiors underwent a Classicist reconstruction into a residential space.

Significant Architectural Features:

• Stone window and entrance portals lining
• Sgraffito rustic of the facades partially preserved under the newer plaster layers
• Renaissance vaults in the rooms near Budějovická gate and vaults in the black kitchens
• Renaissance and Baroque trusses
• Chimney caps
  

History of the House Residents:
The residential houses replaced the vacated St. Elizabeth\'s Hospital, which was most likely founded by Konrád of Petrovice in 1477 or 1489. The chapel of St. Elizabeth stood where houses No. 99 and No. 100 now stand, and was mentioned for the first time in the 1400 remission document of pope Bonifác IX. Maybe in 1504, the hospital was separated from the manorial hospital in Latrán No. 13 and in 1516, the hospital accounts were established. Further evidence about the existence of the hospital is from the second half of the sixteenth century. It was referred to as infirmary because it served people with leprosy and other contagious diseases. In 1781, the city council decided to move the infirmary to house No. 59 in today\'s Linecká street which was built in 1783. Between 1783 and 1784, the former hospital was divided into four parts and sold to interested individuals. Kašpar Koutný paid 500 florins for No. 99 which in 1784 was later divided into two houses; the new house No. 100 was owned by Jan Hőpfler until 1821. Jakub Krzenik paid the same price for No. 101 and Filip Jechl paid 400 florins for No. 103 and his family then lived there until 1812. There is no information available about individual owners during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Stories And Other Interesting Information:
The city hospital - originally for people with leprosy - was documented as functional in 1400. The building is important from the town planning viewpoint as it stands by the entrance to the city\'s historic district. It is valuable because of the historic functions of the hospital as well as because the Classicist adaptation. Insensitive modifications that took place after WWII destroyed a large portion of the original, historically valuable, interior details.

Present Use:
Youth hostel - Hostel 99, Restaurant.