Karel Pařík

Karel Pařík (4 July 1857 – 16 June 1942) was a Czech-born architect in the Austro-Hungarian empire. Pařík spent most of his life in Sarajevo where he designed over seventy major buildings, which are today classified among the most beautiful in Bosnia and Herzegovina. For Bosnians, he is also known as Karlo Paržik and is considered as "The builder of Sarajevo". He died working on his last project, Sarajevo City Hall, which later became one of the symbols of the city. "Czech by birth, Sarajevan by choice" stands encrypted on his gravestone in Sarajevo.

Biography
Born in Veliš near Jičín in 1857, Pařík moved to Sarajevo at the age of 26, after the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He designed around 150 buildings in Bosnia, 70 of them in Sarajevo. Today, they house important Sarajevo institutions such as the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Sarajevo National Theatre, the Faculty of Islamic Sciences, the Ashkenazi Synagogue, as well as government offices and schools.

Pařík fought to maintain historical parts of Sarajevo and proposed construction of new parts of the city away from the old town. He placed his personal mark and made great contributions to the urbanization of Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He is buried in the Koševo cemetery in Sarajevo.

Works
Among Pařík's many works, a few that particularly stand out are:
 * Hotel Europe - Pařík designed one of the Sarajevo's first modern hotels, the Hotel Evropa. It was constructed in 1882 and opened on 12 December 1882. For 110 years, it was the most spacious hotels in Sarajevo, from its opening until its destruction on 1 August 1992. Many poets, painters, artists of all types and politicians stayed in this hotel during the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and later in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The hotel was reconstructed and officially reopened on 12 December 2008, on its 126th birthday.
 * Sharia School (Faculty of Islamic Studies) - Among Pařík's first projects was the Sarajevo Sharia School. It was constructed in 1887 in a rich pseudo-Moorish decorative style with elements and details collected from various regional Islamic art schools. The Museum of the City of Sarajevo was opened in the building in 1949 which contained archaeological, historical, ethnographic and art collections. Today, the building is used as the Faculty of Islamic Sciences.
 * National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina - The National Museum building is one of the most significant works by Pařík in Sarajevo. The museum was founded in 1885 and was open to the public on 1 March 1888. The building consists of four pavilions joined by a terrace and a botanical garden in the centre. The whole building of the National Museum was constructed in the spirit of the Neo-Renaissance and work on the building lasted until 1913.
 * Vijećnica - where the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina was housed from 1946 to 1992. In 1891, Pařík began working on major building in Sarajevo, in the pseudo-Moorish style – the Municipal Hall, or as it is colloquially known the Vijećnica. Pařík did not want to accept the request of the governor, Benjamin Kallay, to make it very large and therefore he was fired. The construction was turned over to Alexander Wittek who was inspired by the Mosque of Kemal II in Cairo. After Wittek's death, the construction was completed under Ćiril Iveković's supervision in 1896. However, the building was built in the style originally conceived by Pařík. During the period of Yugoslavia, this building functioned as the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the Bosnian war of the 1990s the building was destroyed and reconstruction was completed in 2014.