Danube Day 2: Old Prague

Breakfast was a fabulous hotel spread. Steve had an omelet that was more than he could eat. I enjoyed the breads and pastries with cheese and salmon. 

At 9 we gathered in the lobby and various groups took off for a four-hour walking tour of the old town. Although the foundations are 12^th-14^th c, most of the visible architecture is 18^th to early 20^th c. 

 

We spent a fascinating time touring the upper floors of Municipal House where we had dinner last evening. Built from 1905-1912 in the Art Nouveau style, it was the site of the proclamation of the Czechoslovakian state in 1918 and of several other major state events since then. It struck me as the symbolic equivalent of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. 

 

Smetana Hall in Municipal House is the home of the Prague Symphony Orchestra.

 

 

Each of the smaller halls of Municipal House has its own beauty. This painting in the old confectionary is of the town of Tabor, a Hussite village.

This ceiling painting was meant to memorialize Slavic unity, which our guide reminded us is a farce in the 21st c when one Slavic country ruthlessly invades another. She said it with a bitterness that reminded me of her earlier comments on Russia's 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. There is no love lost on the Russians here, and they obviously identify closely with the Ukrainians. (On reading this, Steve reminded me that on our bus tour coming into the city yesterday, the guide told us they had changed the name of the street in front of the Russian Embassy to "Street of the Ukrainian Heros" so that is their address now.)

 

We were in the Old Town Square at 11 AM for the striking of the elaborate medieval astronomical clock. Very crowded. We were warned to hold onto purses and I moved my backpack to the front. Not all the mechanical parts were functioning so I didn’t bother with the video. I was remembering that a shop around the corner is where I bought my crystal goblets 25 years ago when I visited with my daughter. I carried a saucer of my good china on that trip to look for something to go with it.

 

The Czechs honor Jan Hus, a early Protestant reformer around 1400, as a rebel after their own heart. There is a large monument to him in the square and, early 17^th-c martyrs are memorialized on the spot where they were burned at the stake by the Catholic Hapsburgs.

From the square we walked to the old Jewish quarter, originally a ghetto, but beautifully rebuilt under King Joseph around 1900. We passed several old synagogues, a couple still functioning, some now museums. The men were required to wear yarmulkes in the most moving of these, the16th-c Pinkas Synagogue, now a memorial to Holocaust victims from the former Czechoslovakian lands. (That's not eye-patches on his head.)

Eighty-thousand names are written on the walls with dates of birth and date of deportation, grouped by the towns they came from.

Eighty-thousand names.

With a space left to add any others that might be discovered. Red lettering indicates family name.

Upstairs are displayed a few of the drawings recovered from children's art classes in Terezine, the transit camp north of Prague were artists were held until near the end of the war.

Behind the synagogue is the old Jewish cemetery dating back to the early 15th c. Stones are so close together because as the cemetery filled, more dirt was brought in to bury on top of old graves, but the stone of the grave below was kept on the surface.

The Spanish Synagogue, a reformed congregation from the mid-19th c, was built in the then-popular Moorish style.

On the way back to the hotel (after lunch at an outdoor cafe on the Old Town Square) I couldn't resist a peek into this shopping mall with the facade of an early 20th c army barracks.

Inside you could be in any city in the world.

 

 Now it is off to the opera! One of Mozart's.