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fire breaks out

Collections spared as fire breaks out at Prague museum

Tom Hoepf
Tom Hoepf
Main building of the National Museum at night. Image by che. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.
Main building of the National Museum at night. Image by che. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.

 

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AFP) – A large fire burned the roof of the Czech National Museum in Prague’s central Wenceslas Square in the early hours of Friday morning, firefighters told AFP.

“The fire hit about 200 square meters of the roof and the attic,” Prague fire brigade spokeswoman Pavlina Adamcova told AFP, adding the museum’s collections were not affected.

One security guard suffering from smoke inhalation was taken to hospital.

“The fire was reported at 0032 GMT. We had it under control about two hours later,” said Adamcova, adding the cause of the fire and the extent of the damage were under investigation.

The sprawling neo-Renaissance building, a dominant feature of many a picture postcard from Prague, was built in 1885-1891.

It is currently undergoing an extensive reconstruction worth over 1.35 billion koruna (50 million euros, $56.5 million), which started in 2011 and is due to be completed in 2018.