I was very lucky to get to go to Prague for a week in February, 2000, where I visited my friend, Richard, who is very happy to be living as an ex-patriot and teaching english. Click the thumbnails to see a bigger image.

I do have more photos which I took with a conventional camera, so they're not developed yet. Also, I kept a journal of my visit, which I'll put up here eventually, as well as more details about the various churches and such when I find my guidebook which I hope I did not leave in Prague!

Prague in Winter is very wet and chilly; it rained and / or snowed every day that I was there. Luckily, this made for many misty photos like these landscapes taken from various hills and bridges around the city.


Prague rooftops and a view of the bridges.


More bridges.


The Charles Bridge, which can be seen in the above bridge photos, is named after a very important Czech king, Charles (Karel) IV. For a long time, it was the only bridge across the Vtlava River, and it is lined with beautiful sculptures of saints and other Catholic icons.


A statue and a detail of the imprisoned martyrs beneath it.


Richard in front of a sculpture.


The oldest part of Prague is the Prague Castle, which is really a complex of several buildings including a Cathedral, several towers, the "castle" itself, and many other buildings. We were not allowed to enter most of the buildings, and weren't allowed to take photos inside most others, but we were allowed to photograph the main hall of the castle and a few side rooms. I only managed to get good photos of the ceilings, but the hall is a huge, vaulted room which was once used for jousting matches! I also got one photo in the moat outside, Stag Moat. It doesn't do the area justice, unfortunately.


Inside the Great Hall.


A side room and the detail of its ceiling.


Stag Moat, which runs around the north side of the castle, was used as fortification before the advent of firearms, and was also a hunting ground where deer were bred and kept. It is very lush and green, and we came across these openings into a set of tunnels which I presume lead into a dungeon of some kind. Too bad it was locked! Stag Moat was the most medieval-looking area I've ever visited; you could almost imagine you were walking through a forest in the 13th Century down there. Well, except for the "Do Not Enter" signs (which were written in Czech so we ignored them).

St. Vitus Cathedral was the more impressive looking part of Prague Castle. Founded over 1000 years ago, it was built on a site where earlier pagans made sacrafices to some sort of fertility god (Slavic or Celtic, I don't know which). It includes the burual chamber of the original "Good King Wenceslas," who was actually Duke or Prince Vaclav and wasn't particularly good although he was a Christian in a time of severe paganinty, and he was killed for this crime as was his Grandmother Ludmilla. Next to the burial chamber is a room with seven locks, in which are kept the Czech crown jewels, which are cursed. None of this can be photographed, but here are some images of the Cathedral from the outside.

Two views of the front exterior of the Cathedral. I have no idea why it looks so sunny and blue in these photos; it was raining and grey the entire day!


North side views of the Spires.


The north side exterior and some Gargoyles on the south side.


Two Gargoyles on the south side, one in the shape of a cock or some other kind of bird, the other in the shape of a person.



Old Town Square is, as you guessed, one of the older parts of Prague. Located acrross the river from Prague Castle, it contains several interesting buildings, was the sight of a large number of a large number of historical deaths, and includes a beautiful Astrological Clock..


A detail of the Astrological Clock, and a building with a bell (lower right-hand corner).
Apparently the bell had been plastered over and was only recently uncovered.


Side view of the Tower which contains the Astrological Clock.
Two views of the St. Marie of Tưn Church.



Powder Gate is somewhere near Old Town, and is also called "Powder Tower," but because there is a Powder Tower in the Prague Castle complex, I am distinguishing the two. The confusion is because the Czech words for "gateway" and "tower" are the same.



I also traveled outside of Prague one day during my visit, to Kutna Hora, which is about an hour away by train (or two long, boring hours by bus... ugh!). Kutna Hora was once a big city and a minign town, but now it's very small. It houses a beautiful ossuary and several churches, among other sites.

Two views of the bridge in Kutna Hora and the high-gothic church in the background.


An angel carving on the bridge and Richard in front of another of the sculptures.


Just one of the churches (I saw 4) in Kutna Hora, this one is the most high-gothic of the bunch. It was raining quite hard when I took this, and there are raindrops on my lense, hence the suudgy parts.


Although this church is also very gothic, it clearly represents an older, less intricate style. I'll try to find the names of these churches.

finally, Kutna Hora's big attraction is the ossuary or bone church. This isn't all that old, dating to the 19th century, but it is amazing. The reason for the ossuary is as follows: a priest brought some soil from the holy land and sprinkled it on the churchyard, which imade it a very popular place to be buried. The plague made it even more popular, in a different sense. Eventually, there were so many bones that they were getting out of hand, and a blind priest decided to decorate with them. This is the result, including a chandelier made from at least one of every bone in the human body. While I was there, a group of American college-age students were visiting, and spent the whole time shrieking "Creepy," and the like. Idiots.

The aforementioned chandelier.


A skull candle-holder and a pile of skulls which is shaped vaguely like a huge bell.


A detail of the ceiling swag and the doorway decoration.


A coat of arms of a local important family, and the crest at the door of the church.


A cross near the altar and a huge chalice at the vestibule.


A saint in the church, and a view of the church from outside