I'm on the most appalling connection, so I might have to post these photos one at a time - come back if you don't see 7!
Tuesday was a free day for us to do as we liked, but my hip and knee were so painful after two days with hours of fast limping over cobblestones that I determined not to go too far. So we caught the Metro 4 stops to Wenceslas Square and went off to find the Communist Museum.
This is ironically placed above the McDonalds in an ex-palace of an aristocrat and is next door to the Casino! This is the staircase outside the museum; the museum is on the left of this photo, and the Casino is on the right.
Although it is only a small museum there is a lot to see of interest to those looking for a view of life in a Communist State. There are information boards in every room which outline the historical background, beginning with the founding of the Czechoslovak state through to the Communist putsch, Normalization, and finally the Velvet Revolution. These explanations are in Czech but have also been translated into five other languages - otherwise I imagine it wouldn't be much of a tourist attraction.
Some effort has been made to recreate the experience of living under the regime. You can peer into a schoolroom with rows of wooden benches, the blackboard chalked over in Russian, the living room with worn and shabby utilitarian furniture, or a grocery store with a conspicuously empty chiller cabinet, which stocks only two kinds of canned goods.
The most successful mock-up, however, is probably the interrogation room. There are no instruments of torture on display: simply glancing around the spartan office is enough to make you imagine the horrors that took place here. There are more of those information boards, again detailing the most violent excesses of the period.
There is a short film, with some footage from the failed 'Prague Spring' in 1968, with images of Soviet tanks rolling in to the streets of Prague, and the events of 1989 that led to the end of Communist rule in what was then Czechoslovakia.
The museum seems a bit one-sided - it tries to give visitors the impression that all Czechs were hapless victims of totalitarianism, which I'm sure isn't quite accurate. But it does paint a chilling picture of life under a totalitarian regime, with the population at the mercy of 'planners', denied any culture or intellectual pleasure, expected to work and not to question and encouraged to spy on one another for examples of politically incorrect thinking.
After that, seeking something more cheerful, we walked a short distance to the Alphonse Mucha Museum. For some reason I had a vague idea he was French, which just demonstrates my ignorance because he was Czech. He is an Art Nouveau painter and decorative artist who had considerable influence on the British Art Nouveau movement, and known for his very distinctive style. In the West, we know him for his many illustrations, advertisements and postcards.
He was born in Moravia and moved to Paris to study art in 1887, where he also worked at producing magazine illustrations and colourful advertisements. Around Christmas 1894, Mucha happened to go into a print shop where there was a sudden and unexpected need for an advertising poster for a new play featuring Sarah Bernhardt. Mucha volunteered to produce a lithographed poster very quickly, and the resulting poster on for the play Gismonda attracted much attention, so much so that people were cutting it down and taking it away to keep.
He visited America between 1906 and1910, where he did a lot of work and also met millionaire Charles R. Crane, who used his fortune to help promote Slavic nationalism. Mucha returned to the Czech lands and settled in Prague, where he decorated many public buildings and worked on his Slav Epic, 20 huge paintings in a more serious and much less decorative style, which are not really known in the west. When Czechoslovakia won its independence after World War I, Mucha designed the new postage stamps, banknotes, medals and other government documents for the new state.
After that, we felt in need of a late lunch, and found a Bistro nearby, which was convenient as both my knee and my hip were becoming more painful. However, I was determined to see the Old Town properly in daylight, so we set off for the Old Town Square, stopping at the Astrological clock.
As I think I said before, the clock was first installed in 1410, making it the third-oldest astronomical clock in the world and the oldest one still working.
The clock mechanism itself is composed of three main components: the astronomical dial, representing the position of the Sun and Moon in the sky and displaying various astronomical details; "The Walk of the Apostles", a clockwork hourly show of figures of the Apostles and other moving sculptures—notably a figure of Death (represented by a skeleton) striking the time; and a calendar dial with medallions representing the months.
I was extremely disappointed not to be able to see the figure of Death striking the time, but close perusal of my photo and comparisons with other photos on the Internet revealed that two figures are currently missing from the upper area of the astronomical dial, and one is the skeleton! I also waited until 4pm, but there was no parade of the Apostles - they are supposed to appear from the two doors at the top, just below the golden bird. The clock is clearly under renovation at present.
There are many beautiful buildings in the Old Town Square. This used to be the Kinský Palace, built between 1755 and 1765 and felt by many to be the most beautiful Rococo building in Prague. In 1768 it was bought by Štěpán Kinský, an Imperial diplomat, hence the name. In1948 communist rule in Czechoslovakia was proclaimed from the palace balcony. Nowadays, it belongs to the National Gallery.
Another notable fact was that it is where Franz Kafka attended high school and where his father, who was a haberdasher, owned a shop.
I tried desperately to get a proper picture of this amazing Gothic church, the Church of Our Lady before Tyn, but the building in front of it is actually built into the wall of the church, and there are only narrow alleyways all round, so this is the best I can do.
The church was built in 1365 on the site of an earlier Romanesque church. Its magnificent multiple steeples are 80m high and dominate the Old Town Square. Between the early 15th century and the year of 1620 it was the main Hussite (Protestant) church in Prague. I would have liked to go in because close to the altar there is a tomb of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe who worked at the court of the Emperor Rudolph II, but it seemed to be shut.
By then it was getting quite late, so we decided to return to the Metro and go back to the Hotel. We didn't want to have a late night, as we had an early start in the morning, and needed to be in breakfast at 6.30.
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