Completed in 1875, the Provincial Maternity Hospital in Prague represented the state of the art in nineteenth-century obstetrics. At that time, many young mothers died in childbirth; so in 1867, on the orders of Count Franz Thun-Hohenstein, construction began on the new hospital and dormitory complex. The choice of site was no doubt influenced by its proximity to the nearby church of St Apollinaris, in whose grounds there had been a hospital for poor and destitute women since 1789. The architect was Josef Hlávka, who had already made his name with his designs for the quite extraordinary Residence of Bukovinian and Dalmatian Metropolitans in Chernivtsi, Ukraine – nowadays a listed UNESCO building. Hlávka worked principally in a combination of the