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Photo: V-ball, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Tree lined street with number of historic buildings, exclusive shopping and upmarket restaurants and hotels.
© OpenStreetMap contributors
One of the historical monuments of the former Prague Jewish Ghetto. Nowadays the synagogue belongs to the Jewish Community of Prague and is administered by the Jewish Museum in Prague as a part of its expositions.
Pomník mistra Jana Husa
That striking man standing atop a patina-green metal mountain in the center of Old Town Square is not Jesus, though he resembles him. It's Jan Hus, the great Czech religious reformer whose Hussite movement caused as much, if not more, friction within the Christian community than Martin Luther. The statue was erected on the 500th anniversary of his death (6 July 1915). Hus preached in the Bethlehem Church in Old Town. He believed in Bibles written in the worshiper's language, in the importance of faith instead of a clergyman's intermediation with God - in other words, concepts which threatened the status quo. He was summoned to the Church's Council of Constance in Switzerland by representatives of the Emperor, and given a letter of safe conduct to get there and back. Like every member of the Habsburg family, before and after him, the Emperor was Catholic. After Hus refused to repent for his so-called sins and come back into the Church, he was burned at the stake, despite the promise of the Emperor.
Židovská radnice
Renaissance-style building
Staroměstské náměstí
The center of the eventful history of Prague. The Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque buildings were preserved here. The Historical Centre, including most of the city’s major sites, became a UNESCO-listed site in 1992.
A museum of modern Czech arts divided between several sites most of which are in the old town. Its main building is the House of the Golden Ring at the Old Town Square featuring 20th century Czech art in a beautiful medieval edifice. 19th century Czech art is exhibited at the Troja Castle.
Pražský orloj
The Astronomical Clock located on a side tower of the Old Town Hall (reasonably enough, on Old Town Square) is easy to find—just wait until a few minutes before the hour and look for a large group of tourists standing around waiting for something to happen! Still, Orloj is one of the most popular gathering places in Prague. The closer you are to the astronomical clock, the more astronomical the prices in restaurants and stores.
Built in 1410 and thought of as an example of 15th century high-tech device, projected with the participation of maths and astronomy professors at Prague University. The main dial is in principle a mechanical astrolabe, showing not only the current time, but also the placement of the sun and moon in the Zodiac, phases of the moon, the times of sunrise and sunset, length of astronomical night, the time in old Bohemian hours, in unequal hours and other data. From gathering crowds, hardly anybody understands all data astronomical dial displays.
Then there is a slow-moving 12-month calendar with incredibly delicate, small figure paintings by 19th century Czech painter Josef Manes. Every day on the hour, the upper, glockenspiel-style section of the clock performs the same scene: Death waves an hourglass, the 12 apostles shuffle past small windows, and a rooster crows. After the hour strikes, a Turk wags his head.
Long after the Turks had ceased to be a threat in Central Europe, their use as an allegorical figure in genre paintings and other art continued. The Czechs often sided with the Hungarians in various battles against increasing imperial power as exercised by the ruling Habsburg family over their dominions, and though the Turks never occupied Prague as they did Budapest, both countries' artists used "the Turk" (a dark-complected figure, usually wearing a turban) to represent the dangers of the world, and especially threats to Christianity. In the astronomical clock, the Turk is meant to be the stranger.
There is a legend about the clock that states the original master builder of its interior clockworks was blinded by the King who commissioned it after the work was completed so the mechanic could never build such a wonderful clock for someone else. In vengeance, the master builder committed suicide by throwing himself into the gears of the clock, which took nearly a century to be repaired. Pickpocketing is common in this location.