History of Dum u Jeziska (House at the Jesus Child), Housing the Alchymist Grand Hotel & Spa
The first written information about today's Dum u Jeziska dates from 1548. The building must have certainly looked different back then and its ground plan was much more modest. It was owned by Ruprecht Haugvic of Haugvic, who, having debts, was forced to transfer it to Jirik Zejdlic of Senfeld. His three grandsons, Henry, George, and Ladislav, sold it to the Lesser Town community, which also bought the adjoining building, the House of the Golden Scale, number 364, which permitted, from the point of view of this area, a major urban achievement.
Kaspar Bytessky bought the building in 1596 and, just one year later, sold it to the imperial counselor Krystof of Fictum. Another change in the property's ownership took place in 1606, when the builder, Horacio Fontain de Brussat, bought it. He then gave it in 1636 as a present to his nephew Rajchart de Bois, a Lesser Town townsman and tailor. Rajchart de Bois named it the Town of Paris Building, possibly because he wanted to bring attention to his French origin. In 1685, the building became the property of Petr Fink of Finkenthal. Under his and, after his death, his widowed wife Rozalie's ownership, it went through a Baroque reconstruction and received its current shape.
The building, located on the upper part of Trziste Street, is also famous because the young Frantisek Palacky lived there from 1823 to 1825 when he arrived in Prague. In the nineteenth century, a picture of the Infant Jesus of Prague was hung on the balcony on the main facade and the Lesser Town neighbors began to call it the Dum u Jeziska. The new name caught on and has been preserved until today. The name has also been reinforced by the fact that the widely worshipped wax statuette of the Infant Jesus of Prague is placed on its own altar in the nearby Carmelite Church of Our Lady of Victory. In 1988, after prior preparation, an extensive regeneration and structural reconstruction commenced in this location, defined by Nerudova, Trziste, and Vlasska streets, and collectively called Jansky vrsek.