Magic Prague

The outdoor exhibition started already last week, but don’t worry, it won’t disappear easily from our eyes – the statues are now in possession of the capital city of Prague, so when their outdoor exhibition in front of the Klementinum complex ends, they will spread to the streets of Prague. Klementinum is famous for experimental and quite unique sculptures which they place in front of its main entrance to the study body.

The theme of the statues is ‘the long gone citizens and ghosts of Prague’, the author is a sculpturer Igor Kitzberger. Among the long gone and found again characters are Magister Kelly, three-head dog, Powerful Golem, Doctor Faust and many other well known and unknown ones. When the statues leave Klementinum after some time, they are going to be installed at places they are historically bound to.

The Ghost Museum of Prague Mysteriae Pragensia has ceremonially opened yesterday. What is its aim? To open the dark beauty of Prague to its citizens and tourists. The authors have conceived it in the way visitors can spend as much time as they want and to learn as much as they want.

The Prague Mayor Pavel Bem said at the opening ceremony: “We walk the everyday Prague, around its walls and we don’t know which stories took place behind them, wee walk streets with our eyes on the paving and often don’t see higher than one meter above the ground. The museum can open, or at least ajar our eyes, so we could precept the mystics and magic which belongs to Prague history.”

Read on about Ghost Museum of Prague

Charles Bridge is now undergoing a long-term reconstruction, which helps it from the damage that was made by the communist reconstruction. Such an important bridge must have everything special, the sand-stone bricks are being delivered from a special quarry opened only because of Charles Bridge needs.

The same way as the Royal Route is being partially illuminated by gas lamps, the Charles Bridge will get his original historic lights again, after more than 100 years. The first phase of reconstruction is supposed to end in 2010, at the time the bridge should be illuminated by the white gas light, making it more romantic, historic, and enjoyable.

Use of gas lamps is logical, as the Royal Route goes from the Old Town Square to the Prague Castle, of course passing of Charles Bridge is a part of it.

New touristic destinations have appeared in the metropolis, new and quite morbid ones. What connects sv. Cyrila a Metodeje church with Vysehrad Slavin cemetery ? People were dying in there. The agency CzechTourism made a research of Dark places and found out ‘most dark and favored’ Czech place is Terezin memorial, visited by 300t every year.

Three places in Prague got into the ‘Darkest Top Ten’; the Cyrila a Metodeje church where the Czechoslovak para-shooters died after assassinating Heydrich. The upper part of the Wenceslas square is notorious as the place where Jan Palach set himself to fire as a protest against the communists.

Attractivity of dark touristics is based on bringing something new, and providing strong emotional experience. You certainly not find an adequate counterpart to the Edinburgh Dungeon, which really can make people of weaker nature sick, we stand at the beginning, but Prague is definitely a place with Gothic energy and a little of horror belongs in here.

A few hundreds kids went on the scare hunt to the streets of the old Town in Prague, where the scares wandered around on Saturday, scaring the tourists.

Adventurers searched for werewolf, fisheater, snowitch, Licentious Lucrecia, the butcher with a flaming axe, or the man-eating bear. It was a 25th year of the orientation game, which prepares Prague Scout organization Arcus.

The quest was to decode cyphers first, and so, find where some of the 15 scares dwell. The start and finish was at Tyrsuv dum, Ujezd, where the evening continued by fencing performances and fireshows. At the end the nicest scare was voted.

Historic center of Prague is illuminated by 182 gas lamps. Gas lamps produce pleasant, warm light and the feeling of nostalgia.

The deputy of Prague Mayor Pavel Klega went through the ceremonial acceptance to the Guild of Lamp Lighters of Prague yesterday. He didn’t say his pledge to support gas light just in vain – it is his credit and work of past years that gas lamps came back to the historic centre.

To restore the specific light, evoking noble atmosphere of Prague of the 19th century, is the main point of changing lamps to gas again, and it has started in 2002 already.

To do ground-works in Prague centre is extremely difficult, especially because of number of engineer sites and number of tourists. For example when the constructions took place at Old town Square, they had to interrupt the works every hour.

In the future gas lamps should be by the whole Royal Route, even continue to Prague Castle.

The historic center of Prague so joined the ancient Europe metropolises, especially London, which is said to use gas lamps widely, but definitely was the first city, which in 1813 introduced gas lamps to its streets. This is also why the uniform of the Guild of Lamp Lighters of Prague resembles wear of Londoners of such times.

Dampness that threatens the complex mechanism of Prague Astronomical clock has a simple originator: salt. It results from the chemical analysis, made by the laboratory of The National Institute for Heritage Preservation.

“Astronomical clock is in a locality that is seasonally salted on a long term basis” Ivana Kopecka, the manager of the laboratory explains. The other source of salt are nitrates in the floor of the building, originating from decaying biological material. It is for example domestic waste from times of no sanitation system. Earlier harsh repair works (including improper plaster) also contributed to the present state of the walls.

The National Institute for Heritage Preservation analysis also suggests, how to get the Astronomical clock rid of salt and so of dampness: “We suggest to put the present plaster off the walls, and to put on a special plaster which would absorb salt and is easily changeable for a new one.

Damp stains extends from the ground floor to upper floors. They appeared after the floods in 2002 for the first time. Wetness can be the reason of increasingly frequent malfunctions of the sight.

Staromestsky Orloj (The Old Town Square Astronomical clock), that is one of the greatest sights of our metropolis, admired by millions of tourists every year, has a serious problem – the walls of the ground floor are growing steadily wet, independently of rain.

The Prague Office and The National Institute for Heritage Preservation are struggling for months to find out whether the rising humidity interrelates with increasingly frequent malfunctions of the clockwork.

The ground floor walls of Staromestsky Orloj, 600 years old clock, didn’t grow wet until quite recently. Why? That’s a mystery even for Otakar Zamecnik, the Prague ‘orlojnik’ (the Astronomical clock specialist who inherits the function from his father, which has been going on for centuries now) who comes to control the Astronomical clock every week. “The dust from the falling plaster rises up, and when it reacts with bearings oil, they can stuck. The clockwork can stop, and that foretells no good” (last time it stopped in 2002, and devastating floods inundated Prague afterwards)

The National Institute for Heritage Preservation took samples of its plaster and they hope laboratory tests would relieve the mystery. According to a legend, when the Orloj stops, there are bad times coming to Bohemia.

What was the reason? Read on.