My last post left off with me crossing the Charles Bridge from Prague’s Old Town to its Castle Quarter.
The view from the Castle Quarter looking back towards Charles Bridge. The tacky tourist gauntlet continues as you walk steeply uphill toward Prague Castle (30 June 2018).
The medieval kings of Bohemia ruled from Prague Castle, and so does today’s Czech president. I have to say these two statues flanking the entrance to the presidential palace aren’t exactly welcoming. And just like another presidential palace that I used to live six blocks from, this one has a poster-toting protester planted right outside (2 July 2018).
As a general rule, because I’m mainly interested in understanding what it’s like to live, day to day, in the various cities I visit, I tend not to spend a lot of time and money on admission to museums, cathedrals, and other historic tourist sights. But here in Prague, I just had to know what draws millions of tourists here. So I shelled out 250 koruna ($11.27) to get into the major sights that make up Prague Castle: St. Vitus Cathedral and the Old Royal Palace. On Sunday, 1 July 2018, when I first visited, St. Vitus was closed all day, but happily the ticket is a two-day pass, so I came back the following day for the cathedral. But first, I hit the Old Royal Palace, the residence of the kings of Bohemia. Since there hasn’t been a king of Bohemia in 370 years, the palace is, as Rick Steves’ guidebook accurately describes it, “a mostly empty historical shell.” But for a history major like me, there’s still plenty of interest in there, even if the whole palace is a mothballed museum piece (which it basically is).
There should really be a medieval jousting list or a bowling alley up through the middle of here (1 July 2018).
A medieval parliament-type body used to meet here, with the king sitting in the throne in the back and representatives of nobles and wealthy merchants in the pews (1 July 2018).
One room in the castle is where the scribes kept the land rolls, which delimited the property holdings of every landowner in the kingdom as well as the results of court decisions related to property disputes over the centuries. The walls and ceiling were covered with the coats of arms of not kings or noble families, but of the chief scribes and their assistants. I used to be a “bureaucrat,” so I’m happy to see my historical analogues moving up in the world (1 July 2018).
But my real reason for wanting to come to the Old Royal Palace lay in one of the side rooms, the “Czech Office.” Back in 1994-1995, my sophomore year of high school, I took a European history class taught by my favorite high school teacher, Mr. Hall. One day when we were discussing the Protestant Reformation or the Counter-Reformation or the Thirty Years’ War or something, Mr. Hall mentioned an event with the tongue-in-cheek title of “the defenestration of Prague,” in which radical, intolerant Protestants tossed two radical, intolerant Catholic officials out of a window in this very building. (As if the real injury had been done to the windows, not to the men.) Mr. Hall also noted that this was a very obscure event that we wouldn’t have to remember, which of course ensured that I would remember it forever. I can’t tell you what the Thirty Years’ War was about or what its effect on subsequent European history was, but I still remember the Defenestration of Prague.
And so here I was in Prague Castle, during the 400th anniversary year of the defenestration of Prague, looking through the infamous window itself. For once, the English captions at the site (most English explanations at Czech historic sites are numbingly dull, even for history majors like me) added to my understanding and appreciation of the event.
“Defenestration” was a characteristically Czech way of resolving disputes, and one that, by design, was usually fatal to the losers. In the case of the defenestration of Prague, however, the two officials, as well as an unlucky assistant to them that the angry mob pushed out the window after his bosses, all survived the fall, and two of the three had no significant injuries at all. The dueling Catholic and Protestant propaganda machines then went to work: In the Catholic version of the story, the Virgin Mary herself interceded and guided the Catholics to the ground, miraculously unharmed. In the Protestant version, the Catholics were spared mortal injury only by the indignity of landing in a cart of manure that happened to be right under the window at the time.
The more rational, modern explanation for the men’s survival is that the ground outside the window was steeply sloped at the time. Physics-wise, a fall from the tall window arrested by a flat surface would probably have been fatal because of the force exerted on the human body when it came to an immediate stop after falling rapidly. But because the men fell down a hillside, they were able to slow down more gradually, reducing the stress on their bodies and saving their lives.
The window in question. The Catholics ended up having the last laugh. The defenestration triggered the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), one result of which was the defeat of the Protestant Bohemian kingdom. For the next 270 years, the Catholic Habsburg family ruled Bohemia, and Prague played third fiddle to Vienna and Budapest in the Habsburg Austrian Empire (1 July 2018).
The view out the window. It’s a long way down (1 July 2018).
A view of the window (second row down, third from left) from across the way, with my ghostly silhouette reflected in the glass (1 July 2018).
The ticket I bought also got me into a couple of secondary sights on the castle grounds: St. George Basilica, a smallish Romanesque church, and “Golden Lane,” a restored replica of the area within the castle’s fortified wall where soldiers, craftsmen, and servants once lived, now a mix of glassed-in dioramas and trinket shops.
St. George’s Basilica has a bright, cheery pastel paint job on the outside (1 July 2018).
Inside, it’s sort of squat and blocky, compared to the very tall, narrow naves of Gothic churches (1 July 2018).
Part of the charm of this basilica is that many of the original medieval frescoes are still there, in their peeling and faded state. Much of this scene is missing, but I’m pretty sure I see a saint getting martyred here in a most painful way (1 July 2018).
The problem with Golden Lane is that the lane itself, and the rooms inside the adjacent castle wall, are too narrow to accomodate the number of tourists who want to see them. Even visiting toward the end of the day, about 30 minutes before closing and well after the busiest hours, I had to squeeze past dozens of other tourists (1 July 2018).
Still, for medieval history geeks like me, there are plenty of attractions in Golden Lane that make it worth pushing through the flood of tourists. Here’s a fun display of suits of armor (1 July 2018).
And here are some medieval swords that all that armor was supposed to protect its wearer from (1 July 2018).
This is a reconstruction of an alchemist’s residence and laboratory. Cool! (1 July 2018).
And just past the Golden Lane, I got a quick peek at the Black Tower, the castle dungeon, just before it closed for the day.
That dude has seen better days (1 July 2018).
And of course, I didn’t forget St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague’s most recognizable landmark, whose spires can be seen from all over town. I took a couple of exterior shots, and returned on Monday, 2 July 2018 to tour the interior.
I was here (30 June 2018).
From the side, you can see the hodgepodge of different structures that have been added to the cathedral over the centuries (2 July 2018).
I love the gargoyle-shaped gutters. Each one is unique (30 June 2018).
Inside, facing away from the entrance (2 July 2018).
The view looking back toward the entrance (2 July 2018).
This is the most beautiful stained-glass window I’ve ever seen. It was designed by the wonderful early 20th-century Art Nouveau painter and Prague hometown boy-made-good Alfons Mucha (2 July 2018).
This highly ornate silver tomb holds the remains of Czech patron saint St. Wenceslas, if I am not mistaken (2 July 2018).
The cathedral is lined with coats of arms of various far-flung regions of Europe, from France and Spain to the Slavic lands (2 July 2018).
So there you go. The tourist’s Prague, in two long blog posts.