So I definitely woke up feeling better today, and Paul’s elbow swelling has gone down significantly, so we are off to Prague castle! Our hotel is right around the corner to the east end of Charles Bridge, which is a huge bridge with a bunch of famous statues (shocker) that crosses the Vltava River. Here is a picture of the entrance to the bridge.
The Charles Bridge has 30 statues (15 pairs) lining the two sides of it. We only took pictures of a couple of them, but here they are:
This is Madonna with St. Bernard, who is the founder of the Cistercian order in the 12th century:
This is St Barbara (2nd century patron saint of miners), St Margaret (3rd or 4th century patron saint of expectant mothers), and St Elizabeth (a 13th century Slovak princess who renounced the good life to serve the poor). (Where’s Homey?!?)
I guess I was wrong about them only having statues of men in this city. Very cool.
Here is a view of the castle and surrounding houses and buildings from the bridge:
After we crossed the bridge, we walked up to the castle. This is a picture of the Archbishop’s palace, which is right outside the first courtyard to the castle:
This is the First Courtyard, which has guards outside of it because it is the entrance to the castle. Above each guard is a “battling titan”.
“Shorty comes to Prague”. Beatdown! :)
The changing of the guard happens every hour, but at noon it’s an even longer ceremony, and we got to see that.
After walking through the First Courtyard, you come to the Second Courtyard, which is bigger and has a baroque fountain and the Chapel of the Holy Cross:
After the Second Courtyard is, you guessed it, the Third Courtyard, which is the largest and has St Vitus Cathedral, the Old Royal Palace, and the Basilica of St George (they really like St George because he slayed the dragon). Here is a statue of him slaying the dragon (which is displayed in this courtyard):
St Vitus Cathedral is amazing. It is so ornately decorated inside and out. Here are some pictures of the outside. See the spires?
The inside of the cathedral is huge.
Stained glass windows created by eminent Czech artists of the early 20th century line both sides of the cathedral. Here’s a couple of pictures of them.
Beneath each of the windows is usually some kind of statue or carving or something that relates to some event or person in history. We weren’t able to tell who or what these were depicting, but we thought they were cool :)
Here is a wooden sculpture of the crucifixion:
The Old Royal Palace is the oldest part of the castle, dating back to 1135. It was originally only used for Czech princesses, but it was the king’s own palace between the 13th and 16th centuries. When you walk into the Palace, you are in the Vladislav Hall, which is famous for its late-Gothic vaulted roof. It was used for banquets, councils, coronations, and indoor jousting tournaments.
In the back of the hall, there is a balcony overlooking the All Saints’ Chapel:
And to the right of the balcony is an outdoor balcony with views of the city (it was kind of foggy the day we were up there):
To the left of the balcony is the former offices of the Bohemian Chancellery, where Protestant nobles rebelling against the Bohemian estates and the Habsburg emperor threw two of his councilors and their secretary out of the window. They survived because they fell in the moat, but this action sparked the Thirty Years’ War.
To the left of the Chancellery is the New Land Rolls Room, the old repository for land titles, where the walls are covered with the clerks’ coat of arms:
And there is a model of the Singing Fountain in there too:
In the Gothic vaults beneath the Old Royal Palace is the Story of Prague Castle, which is a huge group of rooms that tells the story of how the castle was built over the decades by each of the ruling families, including how heating was done and how eating behaviors changed. Each room depicted a certain time period, and they even had a scale model of the way the castle was during that time period. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, but we snuck a few when they weren’t looking.
Here is St Wenceslas’ chain mail that he actually wore:
Here is a huge shield made of leather, wood, and metal. Not sure if they actually used this in battle or just as decoration.
This is a cabinet of drawers with depictions of amusements for the family in power. No television, ya know?
And here is the actual crown worn by the ruler. I think it looks fake.
They showed a lot of graves of various people. In some graves, they would weigh the body down with something or break off some bones to make sure the dead person didn’t rise from the grave. Once Christianity was introduced, they weren’t supposed to do this anymore, because it’s more of a pagan idea, but they still did it for some time even during Christianity. They also were running out of space to bury people, so a lot of the graves were too small for the body to lay flat. This one is actually quite large:
Throughout the exhibit, they had these little computer machines for some kind of purpose, but we weren’t sure what. Paul liked the little weird guy on the left-hand side of this one :)
In the back of the Third Courtyard is the Basilica of St George (see, there’s St George again). It is the Czech Republic’s best-preserved Romanesque church, established in the 10th century by Vratislav I (the father of St Wenceslas).
As you enter, to the right is a chapel, which is dedicated to St John of Nepomuk.
This is a wall carving inside the church. It looks to me like it’s portraying the three wise men who visited Mary and Joseph to bring gifts to Jesus when he was born:
Underneath the apse of the church is a 12th century crypt, where Premysl kings are buried:
To the right of the main part of the church is a separate area with other statues and stuff. I’m not sure who this guy is supposed to be, but we figured it was one of Homey’s homeys :)
Here is another random stone carving:
To the left of the Basilica of St George is the Convent of St George. This has been converted to a branch of the National Gallery with a bunch of art and stuff in it. We walked through briefly but didn’t take any pictures.
There were other things to see in the castle, but we weren’t that interested from their descriptions and we were already exhausted, so that’s it for the castle. I think it’s plenty :)
On the way back, we were hungry and found an awesome Mexican restaurant! It was even better than some of the Mexican places back home. We each had a burrito that had steak in it and the steak was actually really good quality. Not the fatty, tough crap that a lot of Mexican restaurants back home have. We liked it so much, we made reservations for lunch for Saturday! YUM!
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