Part 73: Prague on Foot May 3, 2013

The next morning after breakfast a Russian couple and I were picked up at the hostel for the free Prague walking tour.   The tour started in front of the Powder Tower.   One of many gothic towers in Prague, this one was built in 1475 as one of Prague’s original city gates.  In the 17^th it was used for gun powder storage, thus earning its name. 

It is right next to the  Municipal House.  The site was originally the location of the Royal Court and palace, but that was demolished in 1903.  The Municipal House was finished in 1911 in the art nouveau style.  It has a large mosaic over the entrance called the “Homage to Prague.”  I don’t remember the details, but I know it has something to do with the original people that inhabited the area. 

From there we poked our heads into the Church of St. James.  This church comes with a couple of great stories.  First, there is a mummified forearm hanging up at the back.  A thief tried to steal the Madonna Pietis statue from the alter.  However, when he touched it, his arm was frozen to the statue and the monks had to cut it off to get it free.  Moral of the story:  don’t rob churches. 

The other interesting tidbit is that Count Vratislav of Mitrovice’s tomb is inside the church and he was accidentally buried alive inside it.  After he “died” people started to hear sounds coming from the tomb and they assumed his spirit was having trouble finding peace.  Years later the tomb was opened and it was found to be damaged on the inside from where the count was trying to get out.  Moral of the story:  I don’t know, but it’s pretty horrible.

 From there we entered the Ungelt Courtyard, a very old marketplace.  “Ungelt” is the name of the customs agents that monitored the courtyard.  You have to enter the courtyard through one of two entrances.  The number of entrances was limited to prevent thieves from easily getting in and out.  There is also an obligatory star-crossed lovers story.  A young Turkish merchant fell in love with a local innkeeper’s daughter.  Of course, it was not approved of and he ended up killing her in a fit of jealousy.  Now he roams the courtyard as a ghost, wrought with guilt. 

We walked past the Tyn Church into Old Town Square.  There is a large memorial in the middle of the square to Jan Hus.  Jan Hus was martyred for Czech religious freedom in 1415.  He was burned at the stake for heresy by the Catholic Church.  He preceded the Protestant reformation by over 200 years and his religious followers became known as the Hussites and over 90% of Czechs followed his teachings within the next century. 

 The Hussite church of St. Nicholas  is also on the square.  I only peaked in the door since it was closed for a concert, but It is a super fancy example of Baroque style.  The main attraction in the square is the Old Town Hall.   The older part of the hall was built in 1338.  Unfortunately, it looks a little odd now because half of it was destroyed by the Nazis during the last part of WWII.  In front of the hall are 27 crosses in the cobbles.  This is where 27 Protestants were beheaded in 1621 by the Hapsburgs, who were Catholic.  This even lead to the end of Czech independence for the next 300 years. 

Particularly interesting to me were two events that occurred in 1419 and 1618, the former of which took place at Old Town Hall, that led to the origin of my favorite word, “defenestrate:  to throw someone or something out of a window.”  In 1419, several town officials were thrown out of the hall’s window just prior to the Hussite Wars.  Then again in 1618 a couple of imperial governors were tossed out of Prague Castle, leading to the Thirty Years War, again a Protestant-Catholic conflict.  And thus, my favorite word was born.

We took a brief interlude from the tour to get some food from the vendors on the square and I found what is ultimately a potato chip on a stick.  The potato is spiral cut, skewered, and fried into awesomeness.  Being from Iowa and a huge fan of the State Fair, I love fried things on a stick. 

We wandered over to the Astronomical Clock on the side of the Town Hall’s tower.  The clock was made by the clock maker Hunus in 1490 and there is a legend saying he may have been blinded to prevent him from making another clock better than that one.   The clock has several dials and keeps track of several different times.  It keeps bohemian time (the gothic numbers that count from sunset), modern time (the Roman numerals from 1-24), and it shows the times of sunrise and sunset.  At the hour, it chimes and shows the 12 apostles, 4 figures representing deadly sins (a Turk with a mandolin for hedonism, a Jewish moneylender for greed, one with a mirror for vanity, and a skeleton with an hourglass for death).  At the end of the chime, a rooster crows and a trumpet player (an actual person) plays a fanfair from the top of the tower. 

We saw author Franz Kafaka’s birthplace, passed briefly through the Jewish quarter, and wandered past the Monument to Antonin Dvorak.   Dvorak wrote the New World Symphony, one of my favorites, which Neil Armstrong took a recording of to the moon during the Apollo 11 mission.  We also saw a memorial to Jan Palack, a university student that lit himself on fire in Wenceslas Square during the Prague Spring to protest Communist Party control over the country.  

Our walking tour ended at Charles Bridge.  After learning that all sites in the Jewish quarter are closed on Saturday, which makes sense, AB (who I met on the tour) and I decided to visit them that afternoon.  First we visited the Pinkas Synagogue.  It is 400 years old and has the names of 77,297 Czech Jews that were killed in the Holocaust written on its walls.  There is also an exhibit of art made by children interred at Terezin concentration camp during WWII that is hard to look at. 

We also went through the Maisel Synagogue.  This synagogue originally was built for a family’s private use in the 16^th century.  Hitler chose it to be the site of his planned “Museum of the Extinct Jewish Race” and used it as a warehouse for much of his stolen Jewish treasures.  Now, it is a museum showing the history of Jews in Bohemia. 

Next up was the Old Jewish Cemetery.  There are over 12,000 stones in the cemetery accumulated between 1429 and 1787.  This was the only place allowed for Jewish burials so they piled people on top of each other and the cemetery gradually rose upward. 

Just off the Jewish Cemetery is Klausen Synagogue which has a permanent exhibition on Jewish traditions which was continued in the Ceremonial Hall.  On our way out, we past the New Synagogue, which is a mere 700 years old, the oldest in central Europe. 

After a long day of education about Prague’s past, we went to a restaurant called Maitrea.  Our tour guide mentioned that it was his favorite restaurant.  It is a vegetarian restaurant the served me the best “chicken” quesadilla that I’d had outside of the US.  It was fake chicken, but it was delicious. 

After dinner, we saw that the Museum of Communism was still open, so we decided to stop by.  Located in a building with a McDonald’s and a casino and marked by a sign with a Russian nesting doll with fangs, the museum leaves no mystery about how the Czech’s felt about their time behind the Iron Curtain.  The museum had many artifacts showing daily life under communism as well as propaganda and art. 

After that, AB and I took in some Prague sites at night before going our separate ways.

All these facts and figures are remembered from my excellent tour guide, interpretive signs that I obsessively photograph, and Rick Steve's "Prague" guidebook.