The Bell in the Tower of the Tyn Church
Church of Our Lady before Tyn, Old Town Square
In the Old Town there once lived a rich but wicked noblewoman. She was such a tyrant with her servants that none of them stayed in her service for long. One day a sweet and quiet rural maid entered her service. She tried to please her ladyship in everything, but without success. Like all the others, all she received for her pains were insults and blows. One evening the noblewoman was preparing to go on a social visit, and the maid was helping her dress, when the bell rang in the tower of the Týn Church to call people to evening prayer. Hearing the bell, the girl stopped attending to her lady, knelt and began to pray as she was accustomed to do at home. The noblewoman erupted in fury.
“I pay you to work, not to pray, you lazy hussy!” she shouted, and, beside herself with rage, she flew at the wretched girl, caught her by the throat and squeezed and cursed until she realized she was shaking a lifeless body. Only then did the lady come to her senses. She quickly called the other servants to her aid, but to no avail. The girl could not be revived.
The lady was called to answer before a court, but because she was rich, she managed to bribe the judge and avoid punishment. She thought she would soon forget the whole business and live the same carefree life as before. But every time she heard the bells ringing from the Týn Church, they reminded her of her wicked deed. In the end her conscience tormented her so dreadfully that she gave all her property to the poor and entered a convent, but first she had a small bell cast and hung it in the tower of the Týn Church, where it would ring in memory of the dead girl.
The Ring inside the Fish
V kotcích st.
Long ago in Prague there lived a rich merchant woman. She traded in every possible commodity and owned several shops at V kotcích and other Prague marketplaces, and her fortune just kept growing, but she was as proud and miserly as she was clever.
One day, the lady was driving across Charles Bridge in her coach. A ragged woman who was sitting there begged her for alms but the lady dismissed her rudely. The beggar nodded her grey head and called after the coach, “You’ll be sitting here yourself after a year, you mark my words!”
The lady heard her. She made the coachman stop, got out, pulled a precious ring off her finger and flung the ring over the stone balustrade into the Vltava. “Some people have good fortune, and others misfortune,” she jeered triumphantly at the beggar, “My good fortune is as sure as the fact that this ring will never return to my hand!” Then she had the coachman whip the horses and she departed, pleased to have taught the impudent old woman a lesson.
Some time later the rich merchant woman was holding a grand banquet in her house. When baked fish were brought to the table, the lady began to carve one and her knife scraped on something. She was just about to shout a rebuke at the servants for failing to clean the fish properly, when she looked at her plate and saw – the ring.
The fish had swallowed it, fishermen had caught the fish, the maid had purchased it at the market and brought it to the kitchen. The lady immediately remembered the old beggar woman’s prophecy and felt uneasy. And she was later to remember the ring more and more often, because from that moment on her luck turned and misfortune followed misfortune. First she lost a great deal of money in an unwise business venture, then her wagons full of goods were attacked and pillaged by robbers, and finally her house was struck by lightning and burned to the ground with all her property. Within a year she had lost everything. And there was nothing left for her to do but go to the bridge and beg for alms along with the other beggars.
The Courageous Nun
Convent and Church of St. Anne, Anenské Square
The former Convent of St. Anne’s with its church of the same name was originally the seat of the Knights Templar. After the Templar Order was dissolved, the complex was turned over to Dominican nuns. During the Hussite Wars, when an army led by Jan Žižka of Trocnov pillaged many monasteries and churches in Prague, St. Anne’s was the only one spared. Legend has it that when Žižka arrived at the convent with his soldiers, the gate opened and out came an ancient nun. “Johnnie,” she said to Žižka, a general who was feared throughout Europe, “Johnnie, don’t you recognize me, your aunt? For the sake of our kinship, please spare this convent!”
“I will do as you wish, aunt,” said Žižka, “but never ask me any other favours again in this life!”
Then he turned his horse and rode away with his troops.
The Treasure in the Bridge
Charles Bridge
In an-out-of-the-way hamlet not far from Prague there once lived a poor peasant. His cottage was small, with a garden just as small and an apple tree, and he had many children, and being poor, they often wanted for food. One night he had a dream. He dreamt he was walking across Charles Bridge and suddenly stumbled upon a heap of gold coins. But then he woke and the coins were gone and the cottage as poor as before. Yet he had the same dream the next night, and the third. He could no longer ignore it, and he set off for Prague and Charles Bridge.
He walked back and forth on the bridge all day until evening, but could see nothing unusual. In the end a soldier who was on guard in a sentry box on the bridge asked him what on earth he was doing.
“How odd,” said the soldier when the peasant had recounted his tale, “I too have had a strange dream, and also three nights in a row. I dreamt that a little way from Prague there was a village where there was a cottage, and in the cottage garden there grew an apple tree, and concealed in the roots of the tree was a golden treasure trove.”
“But that’s my cottage!” The peasant exclaimed.
Together with the soldier he hastened home, dug up the apple tree and under its roots he found the golden treasure. The two divided it fairly and both lived happily ever after.
The Golden Cradle
It is said that when Libuše gave birth to her first son, she rocked him in a golden cradle. When he grew up she threw the cradle into a deep pool under the rock of Vyšehrad, where it sank to the very bottom. Then she uttered words of prophecy: “The gold of the cradle shall lie at the bottom of the Vltava until a ruler is born in Bohemia who shall be worthy of it!”
The centuries went by and the cradle was never found, until one night it floated up of its own accord when the last woman of the Přemyslid line, Queen Eliška, gave birth to Wenceslas, later the King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV. The queen also laid him in the golden cradle, and as he grew the miraculous cradle grew with him. In time it changed into a comfortable couch, in which Charles IV slept as monarch. After his death they say that the magic golden cradle returned to the bottom of the Vltava pool.
The Fiery Man
Karlova st.
In one of the houses on Karlova Street there once lived an old moneylender. He lent money to people in need, but his interest rates were so high that few could ever pay it back, and the moneylender knew no pity. He had deprived more than one poor man of the roof over his head. As his wealth grew, so too did his fear for his money; he was friends with no one, scarcely ever went out, and when his neighbours saw him on the street he never even returned their greetings and would hurry quickly away. Every evening the light in his house would burn long into the night as he counted and recounted the gold pieces in his chest.
One night a fire broke out in Karlova Street. It began in the house just next door to the old money lender. The neighbours from the whole district ran out and helped to fight the fire, carrying crying children out of the burning building and assisting with buckets in any way possible. Only when the flames had engulfed the roof did the old money lender run out of his door, but it was not to help. The neighbours called out to him, but he said not a word and trotted off in the direction of the Vltava River with a heavy bag containing his money over his shoulder. That was the last time anyone saw him alive.
After a while, however, his ghost started to haunt Karlova Street. Around midnight it would totter down the street with its heavy burden on its shoulder asking for aid. It is said that anyone who helps him carry the bag of money from Karlova Street to Old Town Square will free the soul of the unhappy usurer. The trouble is that whenever some passer-by feels sorry for him and comes closer, the old man turns into a fiery skeleton with burning coals instead of eyes and so the would-be Samaritan quickly changes his mind and takes to his heels.
The Oldest Synagogue in Prague
The Old New Synagogue, Jewish Quarter
When the Jews came to Prague, the King assigned them a place on the right bank of the Vltava where they were permitted to settle. Before starting to build houses for their families, they conferred about how a synagogue might be constructed as quickly as possible. The arguments were endless, until a wise old man intervened. He told the others to start digging on a low hill nearby, saying that if they did so, they would see for themselves how to get a synagogue. The Jews obeyed him and set to work at once. They dug into the hill from the top and carried the earth to the bottom. When they had uncovered the upper part of the hill, they struck the top of a roof. Encouraged by the discovery, they redoubled their efforts and in just a few days they had uncovered the entire Old New Synagogue in the form that has been preserved to this day. Their joy was so great that they no longer wanted to keep on digging, and so the synagogue stands partially sunk into the ground. And it is said that it got its name from its strange rediscovery, for it was old yet new.
Another legend tells that angels brought the Old New Synagogue to the Prague Jews from their original homeland, Palestine.. The angels strictly forbade the Jews ever to change it in any way, and perhaps there is something in the tale, because whenever the Jews tried to alter the building, something bad would always happen to put them off the idea. Consequently, the outside and inside of the synagogue have remained unchanged down the centuries.
The Bridge of Eggs and Cream Cheese
Charles Bridge
In ancient times, before the first bridge was built across the Vltava, wagons used to cross the river at a few places where it could be forded. Many ferrymen plied their trade here as well. The old chronicles have preserved the story of the great boat of the mythical Prince Křesomysl of the ninth century, which ferried wagons and people back and forth across the water in comfort. In the tenth century, however, the first wooden bridge spanned the Vltava, and in 1158 the first stone bridge was already standing. It was one of the wonders of the world at that time, since at five hundred meters long it was the longest in Central Europe. It was named after the wife of Vladislav II, Judita, who had ordered its construction. To this day you can see one arch of the Judita Bridge in the basement of the Hospitaller Knights’ Monastery on the Old Town Bank. But a great flood in 1342 tore down the Judita Bridge. This was a huge calamity for Prague and its trade, and so with great pomp the Emperor and King Charles IV laid the foundation stone for a new bridge. He made sure that the ceremony was carried out at a time precisely stipulated as favourable by the court astronomer, who recorded it numerically as 1-3-5-7-9-7- 5-3-1, i.e. in the year 1357, on the ninth day of the seventh month at 5.31 in the morning.
Charles IV entrusted the construction of the bridge to the builder of St. Vitus’s Cathedral, Petr Parléř. To ensure that the bridge would be not only imposing but strong too, the builder decided to add wine and raw eggs to the mortar, but there were not enough eggs for the task in all of Prague, and so they were brought from all corners of Bohemia by royal command. Wooden wagons lined with straw and laden with their fragile load in wicker baskets and trunks gathered on the bank of the Vltava, where the masons broke the eggs and mixed them with lime. Unfortunately, in the little town of Velvary the people misunderstood the royal instructions. Afraid that the eggs might break on the journey, they sent them hard-boiled. The inhabitants of Velvary became the laughing stock of Prague, and the joke has pursued them over the centuries. They were not the only ones to be ridiculed, however, for while the inhabitants of Unhoště transported their eggs properly, they were obviously unclear about the requirement for milk, which was used to thin the mortar for the bridge, and sent cream cheese as well.
All this means that Charles Bridge is probably the only bridge in the world to have been built not only of stone, but also of wine from the Prague vineyards, Bohemian eggs and the cream cheeses of Unhoště. This strange recipe seems to have worked, or Prague Bridge would not have endured for what is already six and a half centuries.
The Hunger Wall
Petřín, Lesser Town
One year during the reign of Charles IV, there was a terrible drought, the harvest failed and food was in short supply. Particularly in the towns the price of flour and bread rose so high that the poor could not afford them, and so many started to thieve and rob just to save their families from starvation. Soon the prisons of Prague were overflowing. When the Emperor Charles IV heard of the situation, he summoned the poor to Prague Castle, where he offered them great cauldrons of soup and fresh bread so that they could eat their fill. Then he appeared before then and said, “My officials will take you to a place where you will be given work. I shall not pay you in money, but you will receive clothing and food for your families.”
The royal officials then led the people to Petřín Hill and showed them where they were to start building a new city wall to run from Strahov right down to the Vltava. The poor spent over two years building the long thick wall, which still stands today, and this work provided a livelihood for dozens of pauper families. People started to call it the Hunger Wall almost immediately, because of the toothed crenellations reminiscent of the teeth of the poor, who thanks to the wisdom of the emperor now had something to chew on.
The Twenty-Seven Beheaded Bohemian Lords
Old Town Square
Twenty-seven white crosses on the paving on Old Town Square commemorate one of the saddest events in Czech history. It was here, on the 21st of June 1621, that the Czech lords who had led the Rebellion of the Estates against Emperor Ferdinand II were executed. Ten noblemen, five Prague burghers and two burghers from Kutná hora and Žatec were all beheaded by the Prague executioner Mydlář. The Czech lords who met this dismal end included some of the leading noblemen of the land. Among them were the seventy-four-year-old scholar and writer Václav Budovec of Budov and the traveller Kryštof Harant of Polžice, as well as the celebrated physician and professor of Charles University Jan Jesenius, who conducted the first public autopsy in the Bohemian Lands. The dreadful and sorry spectacle lasted from five o’clock in the morning until one o’clock in the afternoon. The heads of twelve of those executed were then hung in iron baskets from the parapet of the Old Town Bridge Tower as a warning to others, six facing the Old Town and six facing the Lesser Town. When permission was given for the heads to be taken down ten years later, relatives and friends buried them at an unknown site. They are said to be interred in the walls of the Church of Our Lady before Týn, or perhaps somewhere in the Church of St Saviour’s in the Old Town. According to legend, each year on the day of their death, the 21st of June, the ghosts of the executed gather at the clock and check that it is working properly. If it is telling the time precisely, they are satisfied that the Bohemian lands are prospering, but if the clock is broken, they return to their eternal resting places sad and dejected.
The Miraculous Painting
Na Kampě 9
Close to Charles Bridge on the Kampa stands a house with a picture of the Virgin Mary hanging on the façade, and on each side of the picture a wooden roller. The story goes that the painting was brought to the Kampa by water during a great flood. As the river rose, masses of wood, fragments of buildings and corpses of animals were washed up against the piers of the bridge, blocking the flow of the water so that it burst its banks and inundated the surrounding streets. It flowed around the houses in great eddies, even wilder than in its original channel. Praguers watched the flood from a safe distance and tried to help the people and animals caught up in the churning torrent. A piece of a wooden wall from some cottage, with a picture of the Virgin Mary still hanging from it, had caught in the crown of an uprooted floating tree. The owner of one of the houses on the Kampa was a very pious man who decided to save the painting. He took a small boat and embarked on the raging waters, almost lost his life, but eventually returned safely with the painting. They say that as soon as the painting had been brought to land, the water began to subside. The painting was then hung in a place of honour on the gable that faces Charles Bridge. According to legend, the Virgin Mary in the picture not only brought good fortune to the owner of the house, but always heard the prayers of others who turned to her in misfortune.
A poor village girl once served in the same house. She held the painting in great respect, adorned it with fresh flowers and took care that the eternal flame beneath it should never go out. One day the girl was pressing linen on an old, heavy mangle. Her attention wandered for just a moment, and suddenly her hand was caught between the rollers of the heavy machine. In pain and fear the girl called out to the Virgin Mary to help her, and immediately the machine stopped of its own accord and the girl pulled out her hand unharmed. The owners of the house had two mangle rollers hung on each side of the picture to commemorate the miracle.
The Headless Templar
Liliová st
In Liliová Street in the Old Town a headless man appears every night on a huge white horse that breathes out sparks of fire. The rider wears a white tunic with a red cross, a sign that he is the ghost of a Templar Knight from the former Templar Monastery of St Anne. In one hand he grips the reins of his restless horse, and in the other he grasps his own severed head. They say that he was beheaded for some offence and shortly before his death he abandoned the Christian faith, for which he was placed under a curse. He is still waiting to be released from it, but he can only be set free by a dauntless youth who will catch the horse by the bridle, seize the knight’s own sword and stab him with it through the heart. And such a youth is yet still to be found.
The Builder of Charles Bridge
Charles Bridge
Charles Bridge withstood all the great floods that struck Prague from time to time. But the legend runs that when the martyr priest St. John of Nepomuk was thrown from the bridge, one of its arches collapsed the very same day and no one could replace it, for whatever the masons had built by day fell down again during the night. One builder was determined to repair the bridge. He tried everything but without success until one night the devil appeared to him and offered him help. In return, the devil demanded the soul of the first person to cross the bridge after the repairs were completed. The builder agreed, but not wanting to have the soul of an innocent person on his conscience, he resolved to trick the devil.
After a few days, it was clear that the devil had kept his word. The work proceeded smoothly, and the arch was firm and held up. No-one was allowed to set foot on the bridge until the day of the ceremonial opening, and on the eve of that day the builder hid a cock in the Old Town Bridge Tower, with the aim of setting the bird free in the morning to cross the bridge first and so outwit the devil. Only the devil was even more cunning. He took on the shape of a building assistant, and as soon as the builder left his house in the Lesser Town early in the morning, he ran breathlessly up to the builder’s wife and called to her to run to the bridge because an accident had befallen her husband on the other side. At the Lesser Town Tower, the guard knew the builder’s wife and let her through.
When the builder on the Old Town Bank saw his wife running across the bridge, his blood ran cold. He realized that the devil had won, and taken the soul of the person dearest to him. What had been done could not be undone. The next night the builder’s wife died, and with her the child she was expecting. The story runs that from then on the soul of the child used to float above the bridge at night, and solitary pedestrians hurrying across the bridge could sometimes hear it sneezing. Until a simple countrymen heard the sneeze and as was the custom, said “God bless you!” although no-one was to be seen. Then he heard someone answering in a thin voice, “God willing!” Only then was the little soul set free and able to fly up to heaven.
How the Bells Tolled for Charles IV
The Old Royal Palace, Prague Castle
When the Emperor and King Charles IV was on his death bed in his palace on a November evening in 1378, Prague Castle and the whole town was silent and sunk in grief. All at once the bells of all the Prague towers rang out, and so did the passing bell in the tower of St. Vitus. At that moment the king breathed his last in his palace. At the sound of the death knell, the bell-ringer was astounded, for he had the key to the tower in his pocket. Breathless, he unlocked the door, ran up the stairs and saw the passing bell ringing of its own accord, unprompted by human hand, while the other bells accompanied it. It was the same in all the towers of Prague. They say it was Prague herself saying farewell to the emperor who had served her so well.
The Founding of Prague
One summer afternoon Libuše, Přemysl and their retinue were looking out from the walls of Vyšehrad. The sun was sinking towards the west and bathing the countryside in golden light. Libuše suddenly went up to the very edge of the walls, stretched out her hand toward the forested hills on the opposite side of the Vltava and started to prophecy. “I see a great and beautiful city, whose fame shall one day touch the stars. There in the woods is a place where you will find a man carving a door threshold for his house (in Czech “práh” means “threshold”). Let a fine castle be built there and call it Praha. And just as every prince and king bows their head before the threshold of a house, so one day even the most powerful shall bow to the castle and the city that will grow up beneath it.”
The next day, Přemysl sent out messengers to the place Libuše had spoken of. They found the man carving the threshold of a house, and there they built a castle. As the years went by and the centuries flowed away like the waters of the Vltava into the sea of time, the castle Praha became the seat of the Czech princes and later the Czech kings. And to this day people from all over the world bow before the beauty of the city that bears its name.
