The portal bearing the inscription Praesidium, which led to the former presidium and then to the mayor's room and his council chamber, has always been located on the third floor of the town hall. It is accessible via the main staircase, damaged during the May Uprising, and by lift. The portal was carved by the sculptor Bernard Otto Seeling from Prague, as a counterpart to the late Renaissance portal with the inscription Senatus, and it was installed in 1879. It was damaged to such an extent during the battles in May that it had to be replaced with a copy after the war. The copy was created in the mason school in Hořice from marble from Slivenec, with a sculptural elements from Dalmatian marble from Pučišća.
The portal of Senatus, the model of the Presidium portal, was moved to the town hall from its original location in the former building of the Old Town customs no. 193/I on Křížovnické Square. It was created in the style of the Italian Renaissance after a model from a book by Daniel Mayer from 1612. The smooth columns of the portals are adorned with stripes, in concordance with the Renaissance preference for combining coarse and gentle appearances – "opera rustica" versus "opera delicata".
Sudek photographed the damaged portal after debris had been removed from the whole area of the staircase and the floor, that is in the second half of May 1945 at the earliest.
