Prague Unbound visits the city’s historic center…

The historic epicenter of the city, Staroměstské náměstí boasts some of the most well-known and culturally important sites in the city, from the Old Town Hall, to the Astronomical Clock, to the Jan Hus monument, to the Týn Church, to the St. Nicholas Church, to a host of colorfully named old buildings like the Stone Bell House, House of the Golden Unicorn, House of the White Unicorn, The Lazarus House, and The Black Angel.

A young, bat-eared, sharp-featured child named Franz Kafka grew up in Old Town Square’s House at the Minute and went to grammar school in a wing of the nearby Kinsky Palace (Kafka’s father also owned a haberdashery in the building). It was from a balcony of this same building that Communist leader Klement Gottwald stood next to Vladimir Clementis in 1948 to deliver a famous speech that ushered in the one of the darkest periods in Czech history (Clementis would later be convicted and executed during the 1950 show trials, and have his face systematically erased from photos of the famous Kinsky balcony speech).

For all its beauty, Old Town Square will always be associated with some decidedly ugly events. It was here that popular Hussite priest Jan Želivský was executed in 1422, and here where nearly 200 years later, legendary Master Executioner Jan Mydlář killed 27 Bohemian nobles following the Battle of White Mountain for their role in rebelling against the Hapsburg Empire. With their deaths Czech dreams of autonomy were laid to rest for some three centuries.

Today 27 white crosses remain inlaid in the stones next to Old Town Hall to commemorate that horrific day, and each year on July 21 the ghosts of these men return to the site where they drew their last earthly breaths (where they are elbowed out of the way by tourists taking pictures of the Astronomical Clock with their iPhones).

(Photos via Bogdan Migulski and Hynek Moravec, Wikimedia Creative Commons)