Antonin Aichel

Antonin Aichel, written also as Anton Aichel, Antonio Akel or Aychel, was an Italian bricklayer working in the Czech lands, the grandfather of Jan Blazej Santini-Aichel.

Antonin came of the townlet Roveredo ashore the today Italian Lake of Lugano. Roveredo is situated in the Southern Tyrol, which belonged to Austria by the end of the World War I. During Antonin's life, the town had the German name Aichel, which he attached to his first name in the Czech lands.

He came to Prague in the 30^th of the 17^th century in order to addict to the masonry craft. On the 6^th November of 1635, he married Kristyna Ostova from Pilsen in the small-town parish Church of St Wenceslas. His witnesses were Santini de Bossi, Melchior Meer, the architect Carlo Lurago and Matej Valkoun - the associate justice of the highest burgrave office in the Prague's Castle.

According to the names of the witnesses at the wedding or at baptism of his children, the historians deduce that he worked in the Lurago's building company as a qualified craft operative in building of the middle wing of the Prague's Castle according to the design of Giuseppe Mattey, probably under command of the master Melchior Meer and the foreman bricklayer Santin de Bossi. They judge that he was great at workmanship and enjoyed certain respect.

After the wedding, Antonin resided in Mala Strana, he moved to the street Vlasska in the Prague's Stare Město between the years 1648 and 1650 where his son Carl Antonio Aichel was born on the 16^th January of 1650 and his son Santini Aichel in October of 1652.

Though Antonin Aichel got trained "only" a bricklayer, he was the first one from the three generations of the Aichel's family working in the buildings which are part of World Cultural Heritage today.

Extracted from "http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton%C3%ADn_Aichel"