We Leave Plenty of Room for Imagination

Answers to questions from MF DNES and iDNES.cz about the Prague light park Světla vyprávějí (Lights Tell Stories) at the Žluté lázně (Yellow Baths), October 2023.

The park is called Světla vyprávějí (Lights Tell Stories). What story awaits visitors?

The name is actually universal, because every visitor helps to create the story with us. We leave plenty of room for imagination. In today’s turbulent times, we have focused our theme on the return home – to a place where we feel well and safe. The symbolism of the park should therefore recall a journey. After all, Advent is just such a journey towards Christmas, and as such, thanks to the anticipation, it is sometimes perhaps even lovelier than the festival itself.

What can people find at the Žluté lázně this year?

This year there are some two hundred light sculptures in the park. Together they are made up of roughly 400,000 LEDs, which is more than forty kilometres of light strings. I venture to call them sculptures because they are not merely the result of industrial design but aspire to be a new form of art. Many of them relate to Advent and Christmas, such as various stars, snowflakes, a starry sky and a great many angels. Symbols of Prague are depicted on a large scale, for example Hradčany. Alongside these, visitors will also meet Ještěd or our animal families. The most remarkable object this year is the nine-metre Petřín Lookout Tower.

How does such a sculpture come into being?

The vast majority of them we create to order, so we do not really have catalogues. First a rough idea of what the sculpture is to depict takes shape. I pass this initial impression to the graphic designers and together we look for a way to grasp it, often inventing entirely new characters. If the customer is happy with the look, we begin to draw it out technically. Only a few welders – those with very good spatial imagination – are truly able to make a three-dimensional sculpture. They have to bend the aluminium structure correctly, and the lights must be placed on it just so, so that in some places they are not sparse and elsewhere too bright, and so that together they form a coherent whole.

Which of the sculptures on display most evoke the journey you mention?

There is, for example, a helicopter, which we have adapted to winter, so the rotor is essentially a large snowflake and the helicopter figuratively heads straight for Christmas. There will also be a cart pulling a tree – again an association with the preparations for Christmas Eve. We have also made gates, tunnels and similar elements so that a stroll through the park really simulates a journey, a movement.

Besides new sculptures, have you prepared any other novelty this year?

New this year, we have placed a light raft on the Vltava. From it visitors can view the whole beautifully illuminated Žluté lázně from a slight distance. We were inspired by the people themselves, because many of them often told us that on their way along Strakonická Street they were treated to a breathtaking view across the river, and that is precisely what we wanted to offer people this year.

How well attended was the park when you first opened a year ago?

In total about a hundred thousand people visited the park. Precisely because of the very high interest, we did not end its operation on Epiphany, together with the de-installation of the decorations around the city, but extended it until Valentine’s Day. We changed half of the decoration, replacing Christmas motifs with hearts and similar symbols of love. Whether we will extend it into February again this year, we shall decide according to interest by the end of the year.

What was the most popular with visitors last year?

People like interactive elements above all – places where they can sit, where children can crawl through, and so on. Last year, for instance, the light piano was very popular. This year, next to the sculpture of Ještěd there is a lovely ski cable car that you can step into and have your photo taken in, or visitors can, for example, walk over a miniature of Hradčany.

The park really does shine from afar, so people will certainly ask how much it costs to run – especially at a time when the term energy crisis is so often mentioned.

Already last year I faced criticism fuelled by various myths about how much energy such a park must consume. What is more, last year the government urged the leaders of all towns to behave as economically as possible. And there was great pressure on mayors to make gestures which, though without any great effect, look thrifty. One of these was precisely the curtailing of Christmas lighting. Yet thanks to modern technology, the electricity consumption of such a park is truly minimal. Last year, when there were fewer sculptures in the park than this year, we paid eight thousand crowns a month for electricity, which is essentially the same as running a washing machine every day. And this year, according to our calculations, it will be a further two thousand less.

How is that possible when the decoration is even richer this year?

That is the paradox of LEDs. When you have more of them connected in one system, their energy consumption falls instead of multiplying.

Will people again have the chance to reach the park by specially decorated means of transport?

Between Alšovo nábřeží and Podolí, the decorated boat Labe will be sailing the Vltava. At the same time, one tram line will be diverted to the Žluté lázně, though it will not be the only one illuminated. This year we have chosen for their decoration the true colours of Prague, namely red and warm white. A “mazačka” (a historic Prague tram nicknamed the “smearer”), a T3 model, a retro tram, buses and even the cabins of the Petřín funicular will be decorated. This year we also want to focus a great deal on interior decoration.

Prague is not the only place where parks from your workshop will light up. Where else can people go to see them?

Lights tell a story in all our parks, but each a little differently. As for Czechia, we are also opening a park in Ostrava, for example, which is entirely Vernean in spirit and will be a sort of futuristic Christmas fairy tale. Further parks are also being created in Pardubice and České Budějovice. Abroad, we have built one in Bratislava, among other places.

The light park is not the only place in Prague that your company decorates. Where can Praguers come across the lights of Decoled?

Within Prague we decorate roughly half of all public spaces. Besides that, we also decorate a number of shopping centres such as Slovanský dům, Nový Smíchov or Metropole Zličín, together with various office and commercial premises. And above all, we are behind the decoration of Old Town Square and Wenceslas Square, as well as Republic Square.