Prague

Prague is beyond words!

A city that can trace its origins to 880AD and appreciate its growth through the reign of princes and kings while still maintaining its history and significance is extraordinarily rare in any part of the world.

Yet Prague does this in spite of its seemingly unlimited number of visitors and its unending souvenir shops (and I don’t need to see that toy ferret chasing the ball in the front of a shop ever again!)

We spent a good portion of the first day simply walking the streets of Prague; getting a feel for the sights, sounds and smells of this amazing place. It almost defies belief how little was damaged during the Second World War; while other European cities were being decimated, Prague’s main destruction was to its beautiful town hall and tower. But the tower has been re-built, even if the rest of the hall itself has been destroyed and replaced with an open square (where we purchased a beautifully barbecued pork roast), The original statues adorning the clock tower have been restored and now reside within the basement of the tower while facsimiles adorn the exterior of the bay window today.

One of the tours we did was through the basements of the town hall tower and this is a tour I would heartily recommend. It seems that these basements were in fact the original houses in the centre of old Prague. But the city was prone to flooding from the nearby river so the citizenry, once they received permission from their liege lord (who was a Luxembourger by all accounts) dug a moat around the entire town and used this spoil to raise the height of the town by 10 metres (according to the guide but this does seem quite high …) thereby overcoming a lot of flood issues but also sealing their town from easy egress to would be marauders. When you go under the tower, you actually walk back in time; to when these stone houses had their own private wells (so as to reduce potential poisoning from bands of invaders). You can even see an original street that remains paved and in situ. These cellars have been used as storage areas and prisons. Most prisoners were only kept here for a week or two as it seems most crimes resulted in execution or removal of hand(s) etc. This kept the town’s executioner very busy.

Later still, it seems that Charles IV was the visionary who began the transformation from town to city to seat of civilization. In the mid 1300’s he began construction of the University, the Cathedral and of the iconic bridge that now bears his name. Since then, beautiful buildings have been created; the Klementinum; the theatre next door to the University now famous for where Mozart directed the world’s premiere of ‘Don Giovanni’; the massive towers that sit at each end of the Charles’ Bridge.

Charles was, apparently, a great lover of astronomy and had an astronomer as an adviser. It is perhaps this wonderful combination of University (which attracted some of the great academics of its time) and the King’s love of astronomy which may have been the genesis of the Astronomical Clock.

Where to begin to describe such an amazing piece of engineering? It was first constructed in 1410 and the legend (according to the underground tour guide) was that the creator was actually blinded at the instruction of the town council to stop him from designing another similar device for another town; apparently by blinding him, he would still be able to repair the Prague clock. This was fine until the builder himself understood the councilors to be responsible for his wounds and so he went and broke the clock! It stayed broken for more than 100 years until some ingenious fellow was able to work out the intricacies of the design and get it going again.

The clock itself has two faces; the upper face is able to tell the time in old Czech time as well as in ‘normal’ or standard time as well as track the phases of the moon as well as track the sun over the course of the 4 seasons.

The second (and lower) face shows all 365 days of the year; the dial remains fixed and the disc moves thereby working as an annual calendar.

On the hour, two windows open and a procession of figures representing the twelve apostles move past the windows and turn, seemingly to nod or bow to the street below. Eight statues adorn the clock; the upper four are vanity (a figure looking at himself in a mirror), avarice (a figure holding a bag of gold), death (as a skeleton) and the Turk showing pleasure and entertainment. On the hour, Death’s hand can be seen pulling a cord that sets the clock’s bell ringing.

Another beautiful artifact is that, again on the hour, a trumpeter plays a short musical piece from the four sides of the tower and then waves his voluminous red and yellow sleeve like a pennant at the end of each piece.

The clock itself has been maintained for the last 600 years but it was in 1945 that the most serious damage (as opposed to neglect) was seen. When the tower was bombed much of the clock was destroyed but it has been straightened (where possible) and repaired/replaced (when the damage was too great) to now work and move wonderfully well.

Within the Klementinum (another campus of buildings built by the Jesuits) there is another astronomical tower. This tower has been used to faithfully record the temperature, air pressure and wind speed since about the time Australia was first visited by Cook! But at the top of the tower, still preserved to this day, they have a string line to match the prime Prague meridian. They set up the tower as a ‘camera obscura’ so that only a single dot of light could penetrate the tower. The theory is that once that dot of light hits the string, then it is midday. Once this happened, the attendant would open the door, wave his flag in the direction of the Town Hall tower where more flags would be waved, trumpets sounded and even canon fired to allow the Prague citizenry know that it was midday. This went on at every midday until 1918, apparently. The only thing that changed was the colors of the flags which changed depending on which country was currently ruling over the city.

With all of this astronomical observance going on, it is no surprise that two of the best known astronomers spent significant time in Prague; Tycho Brahe was here for years and now even has a large church named after him. As well, Johannes Kepler lived in Prague for 12 or so years. Kepler is best known for his three laws of planetary motion and how lovely that his laws are derived from Brahe’s observations.

Churches dominate; there are two beautiful churches for St. Nicholas; on in the Old Town and another across the river in the Lesser Town; these churches were each designed by a father and son from Germany.

Another guide assured us that only 25% of the population would ascribe to being ‘religious’; about 70% would be ‘atheist’. Perhaps this is a link to Prague’s more recent socialist past but there is seemingly a church every 50 paces and each one seems more ancient and picturesque than the next. Those 25% of the populace are well served for places of worship!

The Jewish quarter is similarly wondrous. I love the idea of the ‘New Old Synagogue’; the ‘old’ synagogue was built in the early 1200’s while the ‘new’ addition was build about 80 years later. How can a structure now some 800 years or more old still be referred to as ‘new’; everything is relative, I guess.

Another highlight was attending a short (1 hour) concert in the Klementinum’s Mirror Chapel. Having first climbed the Klementinum’s astronomical tower we also visited the Baroque Library Hall. What a room! Now the Czech Republic’s archive this place is a scintillating combination of design and construction that reeks of excess. From the parquet floor to the frescoed ceilings; from the heavy paneled shelves where rows of books dominate all the walls from floor to ceiling to the myriad of globes showing the world and the heavens. This is a room for looking in; none of us on the tour were actually allowed to set foot in the place.

So to the Mirror Chapel where, to be honest, the number of mirrors in the ceiling seemed small. But this goes to a time when mirrors were exceptionally expensive. The floors here have a stylized star pattern; the idea being that when you look up at the mirrors in the ceiling, you can see the stars reflected as if they were actual stars in the firmament.

And so I could go on. Everything you‘ve heard about Prague is true. If you haven’t been, make sure you go. If you’ve been before then I’m sure there’s something you’ve missed. It may have been the Temple church near the Charles Bridge or climbing to the top of the 1/5^th scale Eiffel Tower on the hill overlooking Prague. Or it may simply have been to sit and enjoy a coffee and simply soak up the atmosphere and history that can only be attained by being in a 1200 year old city.