Last Czech day

For my last day I booked a hostel in the centre, aptly called Downtown. I didn't want to share the room with anyone else, so I booked the single room and wow, the view it had! Sixth floor, overlooking the city in the direction of the Castle. Couldn't ask for anything better for my last day in this beautiful city.

During this last day I met with Kristýna, a nice girl from Nymburk, a town in the Central Bohemian region. We drank some coffee in cozy cafe, ate gelato and spent more time in the park, talking, which meant her desperately trying to change subject whenever we reached "bugs". A very pleasant afternoon, including the late run to make her catch the last train!

See you soon Prague! We will surely meet again!

Alchemiae Speculum

Prague always had a powerful reputation for the occult. The golem legend comes to mind, but alchemy and astrology especially, always occupied an important spot in the history of the city, especially under Rudolf II of the Holy Roman Empire, House Habsburg. Under his reign, people like Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler, but also John Dee and Edward Kelley were welcome court, so it's only natural that you'll find an alchemy museum in the city. And in one of the oldest building in the city, even, in the staré město (old town). The museum, in fact, is where an alchemy laboratory used to be. Now, the museum is almost completely reconstructed to look old, bit like Disneyland, but the guides make no secret of it, indicating what was actually found and preserved and what was remade, so it didn't feel like a scam.

The laboratory starts with a study room, complete with desk and all the classic items you'd expect from an alchemist room. A bookshelf full of volumes, weird stuffed specimen from all over the world, a globe, scrolls, beakers and jars. A chandelier is in the middle of the ceiling, channelling the energies of the four elements to the room below, where the magnum opus was being performed. To reach the room below, you have to twist a gargoyle in the library, which opens a secret passage that leads downstairs, where several rooms, each with a purpose, are found, since alchemy was popular with Rudolf II, but not with the pope, so he had to hide things.

  

 

  

  

  

 Other than the main laboratory, with the classic alchemic paraphernalia, there are rooms for glass blowing (alchemists had to make everything by themselves, for the same secrecy reasons), to dry herbs, plus some passages that connected the laboratory to the castle and to areas outside the former city walls.

  

  

In the end, it's a nice and interesting way to spend 40 minutes. The guides don't try to go for the camp/mysterious way, they explain clearly and neutrally how alchemy eventually became chemistry, when it was clear you couldn't transmute lead into gold, and paint an interesting picture of the XVI-XVII Century Prague and its culture.

You can even buy some souvenir at the attached shop, of course!

  

 

Prague

There is not much that can be said about Prague, if you haven't visited it. Every street, no matter how small, is a pleasure to the eyes. In the staré město, the old medieval and then renaissance district, each building is a work of art (although the post-revolution restoration make them all look like they've been recently rebuilt), making Prague a real jewel of a city. It is the sixth or seventh time I come here, and yet I haven't got tired of roaming the streets.

Something tells me it won't be the last time.

Unlike Ostrava and Kutná Hora, the first two days here I stayed with Marta, a Polish CouchSurfer who moved here to work. She has a small but pretty house very close to Letna Park. Marta is very funny, plays guitar, sings and cooks. She also have excellent taste in music, and we spent some time listening to our playlists. In the evening we went to the park, we went with two friends of her and (also Polish) and where I planned to meet with Natalia, my former Yerevan host, also Polish, who now lives here. I was surrounded! At least her boyfriend was Iranian!

View from Letna park at sunset

The second day, I walked the city and went at the Monastery of Saint Agnes, which sported weird sculptures in the garden, and at the Speculum Alchemiae, the museum of alchemy, of which I'll write a separate entry. In the evening we went to a cool bar called Cross Club, with an incredible industrial feel. Spanning several floors, there was a Japanese band playing, but we only saw the last bits.

Weird stuff in Saint Agnes's monastery garden.

 

The Sedlec ossuary

And here I am, after so many years of waiting and yearning, the Sedlec ossuary. It is pretty famous, so there is not much to tell about it, if not that it contains an unprecised number of bones, between 40,000 and 70,000. The church is from the XV Century, built at the center of a preexisting abbey cemetery, large becasue of both the Black Death and the Hussite wars. Bones were already inside, as there was no more rooms in the surrounding lands, but the incredible sculptures that make this place so famous are the work of František Rint, a woodcarver employed by the Schwarzenberg family. Knowing this, let's add nothing else, and just appreciarte this incredible and unique place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the ossuary I still had enough time to see more of the town, so I went to visit the two main churches. First was the impressively named Church of the Assumption of Our Lady and Saint John the Baptist (Kostel Nanebevzetí Panny Marie a svatého Jana Křtitele), a large church very close to the ossuary. Built in the XIV Century, destroyed in the XV and rebuild in the XVIII.

 

 

 

 

 

From the balcony

After this I went to the Saint Barbara's Church (Chrám svaté Barbory), an impressive gothic cathedral overlooking a small valley. You reach it walking the Barborská, a street running along the front of the XVII Century former Jesuit College and decorated with a row of thirteen baroque statues of saints, an arrangement inspired by the statues on Prague’s Charles Bridge.

 

Alcoves

 

 

 

The ceiling

 

 

 

 

 

 

The inside is also impressive, with beautiful stained glass windowos and wooden alcoves. Saint Barbara is the patron saint of miners, and Kutná Hora owes its fortune to the large silver deposit found in a nearby mountain.

After the church I went back to the hotel, collected my stuff an headed to the station. It was now time to take the train for Prague, despite the medieval festival that was about to happen just outside.