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....
Tagged: czech history
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...
Jindřišská 909/14: Main Post Office
Postal services in Bohemia started in 1526, when mounted couriers made the first deliveries between Prague and Vienna, the twin seats of the Habsburgs. But it was not until the reign of Maria Theresa in...
Charles Bridge: Jan Nepomuk
The baroque statues for which Charles Bridge is rightly famous are not arranged according to any predetermined plan. They were erected individually over many decades, part of the programme of recatholicization after the Thirty Years’...
Vinohradská 1409/12: Czech Radio
Radio broadcasts in Czechoslovakia began on 18 May 1923, making the fledgling state only the second country in Europe after Britain to enjoy such a regular service. For the first two years, programmes were broadcast...
Expo 58 Pavilion, Letenské sady 1500/80
On the eastern slopes of Letná hill, overlooking the Vltava, this unusual modernist pavilion looks as if it has been teleported from some future time into its present location. In actual fact that’s not far...
Náměstí Míru: Memorial to Josef and Karel Čapek
Prague is a city full of stories of artificial human beings, from the Golem, a mud-man devised by the 16th century Rabbi Loew to protect the Jewish community, to the bizarrely mummified remains of Klement...
Bulovka: Vychovatelna and Rokoska
Entering the city limits, drivers approaching Prague from the north encounter a dramatic sight. Dominating the high ridge to their left, a brooding neo-baroque chateau suddenly hoves into view like a great three-storey ship sailing...
Statue of Libuše and Přemysl, Vyšehrad
Přemysl and Libuše, Josef Myslbek, 1897 (copy) In the peaceful grounds of the ancient fort of Vyšehrad stand four monumental statues by Josef Myslbek depicting characters from early Czech mythology. One shows an allegorical couple,...
