The history, reconstruction and use of culture monument (The case study of the auditorium Gymnázium Benešov)

Gymnasium Benešov is a very significant educational institucion in the city. Its history is closely linked to the order of piarists, who came into the city in the early of the 18th century. They established a colliage here and started a school teaching. The existence of the order then played a very important part in cultural development of the city and its inhabitants. In 1907 a new neo-renaissance building was constucted for this institucion, because the number of students was ever growing. One part of the new building was a baroque chapel with seccesion wall paintings. During the last century these paintings met a very complicated but remarkable history. The central themes of these paintings were strongly religiously oriented and were therefore in conflict with political power, which came after the Communist revolution in February 1948. So it happened that they were painted over and for several decades disappeared from the world. They disappeared, but were not lost nor completely forgotten, under a layer of white paint they only rested, waiting patiently for the day of their re-discovering. It eventually took place in the reconstruction of the chapel, which was carried out in the school year 2006/2007 on the occasion of the building's centennial celebrations. Let us now together in the footsteps of the reconstruction, let us examine what preceded it, what diffficulties it met and what results it finally brought