Prague First Impressions

I am blogging about two days ago because I have been busy exploring this amazing city. When we first arrived a thin layer of snow blanketed the ancient fortifications and statues on the St Charles Bridge. At dusk with the castle lit up in the background, the city looked like the setting from one of Grimms’ a fairly tales.

On the St Charles Bridge

For our first full day in Prague we took a walking tour of the city, starting with Prague Castle and ending in the old town square in front of the famous astronomical clock. Prague Castle is actually a large complex of fortified buildings and palaces, the largest in the world second only to Windsor Castle in the UK. Inside we visited the main cathedral with spectacular ornamentation from multiple different centuries, including the tombs of the first Habsburgs in Prague and stain-glass windows decorated by different famous Czech artists. My favorite was the window by Alfons Mucha, which was painted rather than traditional stained glass and was stunning, depicting early Czech history. From there we went to the main palace where the famous (Second) Defenestration of Prague took place, when Protestants threw two Catholic stewards and a secretary out of the window, starting the Thirty-Years War. It gave me chills standing by the window, thinking how a few people’s actions changed the history of the entire continent.

Cathedral in Prague Castle

That night we saw the Czech opera Rusalka by Dvorák. The opera house was absolutely beautiful with the classical painted ceilings, balconies with separate boxes, and gold ornamentation. The performance itself was entertaining, but difficult to compare to La Traviata in Berlin which was wonderful. However, the costuming and set for Rusalka was much more complex and the main soprano’s voice was amazing. It was interesting for me to hear the Czech language being sung, it was rhythmic and beautiful. The subtitles for the opera were in English and in German. Granted Prague is a popular city visited by many tourists from all over the world I have noticed and been impressed by how accommodating the Czech people are by translating their language into multiple others and how well many people know English.

Mucha Glass Window