Magic Prague

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.