Legiobanka

The creation of the bank, in Irkutsk in the autumn of 1919, was preceded by that of the Military Savings Bank ( a year before. A key figure for the establishment of both institutions was , a legionnaire officer responsible for the logistics and financing of the approximately forty thousand-strong legionary army in Russia. Šíp logically became the bank's first general manager. The bank maintained its activity throughout the interwar period. In addition to its head office, it had four local branch offices in Prague and 17 local branches in the rest of the country, in Berehovo, Bratislava, Brno, Duchcov, Hradec Králové, Jihlava, Kolín, Louny, Lovosice, Ostrava, Nové Mesto nad Váhom, Olomouc, Piešťany, Plzeň, Poprad, Turnov, and Zvolen. During the presidency of Tomáš Masaryk in the 1920s and 1930s, the bank was associated with the political group around him known as the Hrad (). In the late 1930s, its building was also the seat of the Party of National Unity. In 1940, the occupation authorities ordered the bank to rename itself as Czecho-Moravian Bank in Prague. In 1943, it was designated for merger with , a cooperative bank of the German community in Prague that had been established in 1911, but that plan was not carried out. and nationalized in October 1945 under Decree No. 102/45. which itself was absorbed in 1950 into the State Bank of Czechoslovakia. ==Head office==

, designed by Dušan Jurkovič The bank was initially located in Prague's Štefánik barracks and then in the hotel . In 1923, it moved into its own new designed by architect Josef Gočár in 1921. It displays four figurative representations by sculptor Jan Štursa of the Legion's fighting, respectively on the Italian front (battles of and the Piave), Eastern Front (Zborov), Russian Far East (the revolt of the Czechoslovak Legion on the Trans-Siberian Railway, known in Czech as the ), and Western Front (Vouziers and ). Above these is a frieze depicting the return of the Legions, by Otto Gutfreund. Visual artist led the interior design. In 1922, Legiobanka purchased the adjacent building at Na Poříčí 26, and in 1937–1938 had it rebuilt on a design by František Marek to host various facilities including the avant-garde led by Emil František Burian. The theatre was revived from 1960 to 1991 as the . The building was purchased in 1990 by ČSOB, which had it renovated in 1991–1994 and keeps a branch at the street level. In 1994, the theatre was revived again as , after which the entire building is also known as the Archa Palace (). ==See also==