Můstek (Little Bridge)
Embedded in a wall of the vestibule of Můstek metro at the northern end of Wenceslas Square is the little bridge (‘můstek’) that gives the underground station its name. The marlstone bridge, constructed in the...
LATEST ADDITIONS
Národní 1009/3: Czech Academy of Sciences
Of all the work of Vojtěch Ignác Ullmann, perhaps the most outstanding is the building that today houses the Czech Academy of Sciences (Akademie věd). Ullmann’s grand neo-renaissance plan saw off competition from a large...
Prague Loreto
According to legend, in order to keep it safe from the hands of the infidel, the simple house in which the Virgin Mary is supposed to have lived was transported from Nazareth by divine intervention....
National Museum
The seeds of a national museum were sown as early as the 1780s with the establishment of the Royal Bohemian Society of Learning, ancestor of today’s Academy of Sciences. Its members were wealthy, aristocratic and...
Novoměstská radnice: New Town Hall
The founding of the so-called ‘New Town’ in 1348 made Prague the third largest city by area in the whole of Europe after Rome and Constantinople. According to the census of thirty years later, the...
Mickiewiczova 233/1: Villa Bílek
From the 1720s to 1890s, Prague’s castle district was surrounded by a defensive wall, punctuated at intervals by gates and bastions. However, the so-called Marian ramparts proved to be of limited military use, so between...
New City Hall (Nová radnice)
New City Hall (Nová radnice) — not to be confused with the mediaeval New Town Hall (Novoměstská radnice) — was built between 1908 and 1912 according to a design by Osvald Polívka. At first, the...
Basilica of Saint Wenceslas, Smíchov
The township of Smíchov, on the left bank of the Vltava, was a centre of Christian worship from the earliest times. The first Carthusian monastery in Bohemia stood close to here, from its foundation in...
Charles Bridge: Saints Cyril and Methodius
On 3 September 1890, a powerful flood washed away three arches of Charles Bridge. Two eighteenth-century statues by Ferdinand Maxmilián Brokoff toppled into the river and were smashed to pieces. Enough was salvaged to be...
Na Příkopě 391/7: U Dörflerů
The commercial and residential building U Dörflerů was built in 1905 by the firm of Matěj Blecha. Occupying a prime location near the lower end of Wenceslas Square, its decorative facade is the perfect example...
