Europe 2019 - Day 30 (Part 1)

5 June 2019, Wednesday

Today we explore Prague!

So let’s start with a bit of history, because history bridges the past to the present. The Czech lands were originally inhabited by the Boii (from which the region Bohemia derives its name), a Celtic tribe. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Germanic tribes took over from the Celts. Then the Slavs arrived, and by the 9th century established the Great Moravian Empire. After the fall of this empire, the Lands of the Bohemian Crown was formed. Under the reign of Emperor Charles IV in the second half of the 14th century, the Bohemian Kingdom became the centre of the Holy Roman Empire, with Prague as its capital. This is the golden era of the Czech lands. 

Then came the Hussite wars (different ideologies between the Catholics and the Utraquists). After the death of Charles IV, the Empire slowly dwindled and fell into the hands of the Habsburg-led Austrian Empire. Shortly before the end of WW I and the collapse of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, the closely related Slavic nations of Czechs and Slovaks declared their independence and merged to become Czechoslovakia in 1918. After WW II, the country fell within Soviet influence after a coup by the Communist Party in 1948. By 1989, after protests, revolutions and the fall of the Berlin Wall, communism no longer found favour and a democratic government was installed. In 1993, Czechoslovakia peacefully dissolved, becoming the new states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. 

There! That wasn’t so bad now, was it? 

We started at about 9 a.m. after breakfast in the hostel (hot coffee!!). We took a tram towards Old Town, and walked to Old Town Square which is surrounded by magnificently preserved architecture dating as far back as the 14th century. First to the Old Town Hall, where you have to buy tickets to go up the clock tower and which includes a guided tour underground.

The Old Town Hall was established in 1338 as Prague’s oldest town hall on the basis of a remit to do so by the Czech King, John of Luxembourg. Originally the Old Town Hall were houses belonging to burghers on the Old Town Square. Now it is a set of 5 houses integrated into a single unit. A large part of the building was destroyed during WW II, and had to be restored. It has one of the oldest town hall towers in Europe. In the past, watchmen were stationed at the top of the tower to monitor the town’s environs and warn the townsfolk in case of danger. Watchmen served in the Old Town Hall until 1886 until their functions were replaced by modern fire detection technology. 

The most interesting thing at the Old Town Hall for me was the Astronomical Clock, built in 1410. It’s the world’s third oldest clock of its kind, and the only working one. The main part of the mechanism of the clock is between 2 floors. Part of its mechanism consists of statues of the 12 apostles which appears at 2 small windows on the hour (from the outside). We could also view the apostles from the inside of the clock. During the apostles’ parade every hour, there are other figures on the facade of the clock which also come alive by mechanical movement. One of these figures is the Grim Reaper ringing the death knell - reminding us that our limited time will inevitably one day expire.

Inside the town hall, we also saw the Chapel of the Virgin Mary built in 1381. There used to be church services held here for prisoners held in the town hall or for convicts who had been sentenced to death, before their execution. 

Then we went to the Romanesque-Gothic underground cellars located beneath the town hall complex, and is older than the town hall itself. In centuries past, this underground network used to be at street level, but now it is about 2-8 metres below ground. This is because the land was often flooded by the Vltava River at that time and so had to be artificially raised. During the 13th century, the original ground floors of these houses became underground areas which began to be used as cellars.