Prague (Praha) is one of the
least "eastern" European
cities you could imagine.
Architecturally it is a revelation:
few other cities anywhere in Europe
look so good - and no other European
capital can present six hundred
years of architecture so completely
untouched by natural disaster or
war. Hardly surprising, then, that
ninety percent of Western visitors
spend all their time in and around
the capital and that Praguers exude
an air of confidence about their
city.
Prague rose to prominence in the
ninth century under Prince Borivoj,
its first Christian ruler and
founder of the Premyslid dynasty.
His grandson, Prince Václav, became
the Good "King" Wenceslas
of the Christmas carol and the
country's patron saint. The city
prospered from its position on the
central European trade routes, but
it was after the dynasty died out in
1306 that Prague enjoyed its golden
age . In just thirty years
Charles IV of Luxembourg transformed
it into one of the most important
cities in fourteenth-century Europe,
founding an entire new town, Nové
Mesto, to accommodate the influx of
students. Following the execution of
the reformist preacher Jan Hus in
1415, the country became engulfed in
religious wars , and trouble
broke out again between the
Protestant nobles and the Catholic
Habsburgs in 1618. The full force of
the Counter-Reformation was brought
to bear on the city's people, though
the spurt of Baroque rebuilding that
went with it gave Prague its most
striking architectural aspect.
After two centuries as little
more than a provincial town in the
Habsburg Empire, Prague was dragged
out of the doldrums by the Industrial
Revolution and the národní
obrození , the Czech national
revival that led to the foundation
of the First Republic in
1918. After World War II, which it
survived substantially unscathed,
Prague disappeared completely behind
the Iron Curtain. The city briefly
re-emerged onto the world stage
during the cultural blossoming of
the Prague Spring in 1968,
but the decisive break came in
November 1989, when a peaceful
student demonstration, brutally
broken up by the police, triggered
off the Velvet Revolution
which eventually toppled the
Communist government. The popular
unity of that period is now history,
but there is still a great sense of
new-found potential in the capital,
which has been transformed by
restorations over the last decade.
The City
The River Vltava (Moldau in German)
divides the capital into two unequal
halves: the steeply inclined left
bank, which accommodates the
quarters of Hradcany and Malá
Strana, and the more gentle,
sprawling right bank, which includes
Staré...
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