Church of St. Nicholas, Mala Strana

We had planned to skip this one--how many Baroque churches do you have to see?--but it was right across the street from a restaurant we liked, and something told me it was worth the (modest) admission fee.

St. Nicholas from street level

Interior; knock-out Counter-Reformation

Baroque to the hilt

Altar

Impressive dome

Nave ceiling

Organ

Interesting pose, Vicki thought

Skewering another Protestant

Hradcany Castle

It's way too large for a photo, built in the Middle Ages, and added on to since.

But first, today's wedding photo shoot shot, in the castle

square (we see one nearly every day)

The Czech crown, etc.; hasn't been used for quite a while

Interior of St. George's Basilica, a 10th

century chapel on the premises

The basilica itself

View out the state rooms' windows (the usual no pix policy

enforced)

The view: the domes and roof of St. Nicholas', in Mala

Strana, below the castle hill

The Moldau and Charles Bridge below

The City of Spires, it's called

Ditto

St. Vitus' Cathedral

St. Vitus' is in the Hradcany Castle complex, on the west side of the town, on a hill over-looking the Moldau. Parts of the castle go back to the 11th century or earlier. St. Vitus took some 600 years to build, started in the 13th century, finished in the 19th. It is quite large and high, with beautiful windows and scultpure, very much the national cathedral of the Czech Republic.

West facade and towers; flaming Gothic, as

you can see

Interior

Beautiful windows (Mucha's the best, we

thought; see earlier post)

Stained light on the floor

Ceiling; note tracery at top of windows

Tomb of St. Vitus; the original church was

built around it in the 10th century

A royal tomb

Rose window

St. Wenceslas chapel

East side, buttresses, spires and tower

Alfons Mucha

Alfons Mucha is to Prague what Antoni Gaudi is to Barcelona; one sees Mucha's work everywhere. We went to the Mucha Museum and to an exhibit at the Municipal House, and later, to the Slavic Epic in Moravsik Krumlov, in Moravia.

You may never have heard of Mucha, but

you have seen his work and that of many

imitators; the Style Mucha is nearly

synonymous with Art Nouveau...slinky

women, flowers, extravagant ornamentation

Typical

After a few years' struggle in Paris, he took

the arts world by storm--applied/commercial/

graphic arts--in the 1890s as the poster artist

for Sara Bernhardt; after that, nearly

everything bottled or packaged came to have

a Mucha design; champagnes, biscuit tins,

cigar boxes, you name it

The Mucha window in St. Vitus' Cathedral

Closer up; wildly successful as a commercial artist, he

devoted the second half of his life to nationalism and

"serious" art, painting the 20 massive canvasses of the

Slav Epic--we'll see later--this stained glass window

in St. Vitus', as well as currency, postage stamps, and

other items for the newly created post-WWI Czechslovakia

(the Hapsburgs had ruled Czechslovakia for centuries)

Municipal House

Sights from the beautiful Municipal House and the main square in Stare Mesto.

The Medieval Tower next to the Municipal

House

Smetana Hall, the great concert hall in the Municipal House

Entry oramentation for the Municipal House

One of the several gorgeous restaurants

Another

Downstairs, the Czech dining room/beer hall, incredible

paneling

Glass-work like this everywhere

Nearby, towers of the Church of Our Lady of Tyn

The massive statue to Jan Hus, in the main square; Hus was

the earliest of Protestant reformers, burnt at the stake after

his capture (by deceit) and refusal to recant

Rathaus tower and the astronomical clock;

the crowd was wowed, but we've seen better...

Old New Synagogue

Prague's Jewish Quarter, the Josefov, is one of Europe's oldest and largest and includes many historic sites.

Not least of which is the Old New

Synagogue, Europe's oldest surviving

synagogue

Built in the 13th century, small but identifiably Gothic in

architecture; only very slightly enlarged and remodeled

from that time

More interior

Sanctum sanctorum, so to speak

Still more interior

Slits cut in the thick wall so the women-folk could peer in

Medieval donation box

Flag in the shape of the hats Jews were forced to wear

Another, younger synagogue

With clocks

We're still pondering this one, although it is clear the

woman on the right is listening to an iPod

A glimpse into the old Jewish cemetery,

where some 100,000 are buried, under

12,000 headstones; they were allotted very

little space