Slavonic Island and Sophies Palace If you visit the Dancing House then when you look down into this part of the river you’ll see a weir. You may think that this is a fairly recent thing to control the river but actually there has been a weir here for at least 600 years. It’s a … Read More
Prague Tourism Sign Posts In the age of Google Maps you’d be forgiven for thinking that physical sign posts planted in the ground is all a bit 1990s. But once you get used to what they show you they are a useful aid to exploring the city especially if your data connection breaks. So you’re … Read More
Prague National Museum, Architectural and Cultural Icon I could tell you that it is a neo-Renaissance building that opened in 1891 but as thousands of other sites will tell you the same thing wouldn’t you like to hear something new like how the museum ended up being built here, what it replaced, why in the … Read More
St Nicholas Church Old Town Some buildings in Prague are so old that nobody is really sure exactly how old they are. St Nicholas Church Old Town is one of them. The best we can say is that the original church is “likely” to have been built in the 12th Century but the oldest documented … Read More
St James Basilica If you have come from the Old Town Square and you’ve walked through the Tyn Courtyard then as you emerge onto the street at the far end (Mala Stupartska) you’ll see the church 30 metres to your left. The church, to be accurate it was made a “Basilica Minor” in 1976, has … Read More
Troja Chateau In Czech it has the name “Zámek” which usually means it’s a castle so some people call it Troja Castle. But when you see pictures it looks more like a chateau or a villa so again some people call it Troja Chateau or Troja Villa or Troja Palace. For me it’s Troja Chateau. … Read More
Jan Hus Monument The period from 1850 to 1918 is known as the Czech National Revival. All aspects of “what it was to be Czech” from an ethnic, cultural, political and religious point of view were being investigated and highlighted. Famous Czechs of the past were being honoured and by the early 20th Century it … Read More
Prague Metronome In 1891 Prague hosted the World’s Fair (what would become called EXPO) in the Prague 7 Exhibition Grounds. One of the structures built for that fair was the Little Eiffel Tower. For the 100th anniversary of that event the Society for the Czechoslovak General Exhibition returned to the same place and commissioned another … Read More
How to Tell the Time on the Astronomical Clock When you look at the Astronomical Clock in Prague it’s like a mass of numbers, lines, colours and moving parts. So to make it less complicated I’m going to explain to you how to read the current time and how to understand Old Czech Time as … Read More
The Old Jewish Ceremonial Hall in Prague, there’s more than one! This building in Josefov is strongly linked to something called Chevra Kadisha and I’ll explain more about them below. Both the Old Ceremonial Hall and the adjacent Klausen Synagogue deal with Jewish customs and traditions. The Old Jewish Ceremonial Hall story is described on … Read More