49 Fun Facts About Prague

Prague sits on which river?

The Vltava meets the Elbe at Melnik, where it is the longer river and carries more water, so by the usual rule the Elbe would count as its tributary.

Prague is nicknamed the City of a Hundred what?

Spires: mathematician Bernard Bolzano counted 103 of them in the 19th century, but with today's tally put at around 500 the nickname now undersells the skyline.

Which legendary prophetess foresaw Prague as 'a great city whose glory will touch the stars'?

Libuse, in the legend, answered tribesmen who resented a woman's rule by taking a ploughman named Premysl as her husband, and their line became the Premyslid dynasty.

What wrecked Prague's Judith Bridge in 1342, so that Charles Bridge had to be built in its place?

A flood wrecked the Judith Bridge, yet a stone head from it, the Bearded Man, survives in the embankment wall, where Praguers long used it to gauge the river's height.

Charles IV, the emperor who founded Prague's New Town in 1348, came from which dynasty, new to Bohemia's throne?

Luxembourg: his father John won Bohemia's throne in 1310 by marrying Elizabeth, sister of the last Premyslid king, whose murder in 1306 had ended the old dynasty's male line.

Charles University, founded in 1348, holds what distinction?

Oldest in Central Europe: Charles IV modelled it on the University of Paris, and a 1409 decree handing control to its Czech masters drove foreign scholars away to found Leipzig University.

Charles Bridge's first stone was reputedly laid at a minute chosen because the date and time digits formed what?

A palindrome: legend puts the moment at 5:31 on 9 July 1357, written 1-3-5-7-9-7-5-3-1, a 'numerical bridge' the emperor hoped would lend strength to the stone one.

Charles Bridge's 30 statues are mostly in which style?

Baroque: the statues were added around 1700, more than three centuries after the Gothic bridge was begun, and many have since been swapped for copies, with the originals kept indoors.

Prague's Hunger Wall was reputedly built in the 1360s for what purpose?

To give famine victims paid work is the legend's version; the wall was built in 1360–62 as a defence against attack from the west and south, and the hungry name stuck after a famine in 1361.

Which Prague preacher and university rector was burned at the stake in Konstanz in 1415?

Jan Hus went to the council under a royal promise of safe conduct, was imprisoned within weeks and burned as a heretic; his death set off the Hussite Wars.

The 1618 Defenestration of Prague triggered which conflict?

The Thirty Years' War grew out of the Bohemian revolt this act began, even though the two royal governors and their secretary who were its victims all survived.

'Defenestration', a word Prague made famous, means throwing someone out of what?

A window: the word joins Latin de, 'out of', and fenestra, 'window', and is thought to have entered English after Bohemian rebels hurled two royal governors out of one in 1618.

Which Habsburg emperor moved his court to Prague in 1583 and filled it with alchemists?

Rudolf II spent lavishly on alchemists, astronomers and art while neglecting to govern, until his brother Matthias forced him to hand over the Bohemian crown in 1611.

Which 1620 clash just outside Prague crushed the Bohemian revolt and Frederick V, the 'Winter King'?

White Mountain's losers paid dearly: in June 1621, 27 leaders of the revolt were executed in Old Town Square, where 27 crosses set in the paving still mark the spot.

According to Guinness, Prague's Hradcany complex is the world's largest what?

Ancient castle: the complex covers almost 70,000 square metres, and its crown jewels lie behind a door with seven locks, so seven office-holders must gather to open it.

Which Prague church took nearly 600 years to finish?

St Vitus Cathedral stood unfinished for centuries after war halted the work in the 15th century, and was only completed in 1929, in time for the St Wenceslas millennium.

Legend says Prague's clockmaker Hanus was what, so he could never build another clock?

Blinded, the legend says, on the councillors' orders, and he stopped the clock in revenge; in fact it was built in 1410 by Mikulas of Kadan, decades before Hanus worked on it.

Which figure on Prague's astronomical clock strikes the hour and starts the Walk of the Apostles?

A skeleton representing Death rings the bell on the hour, and the figures beside him, among them a Turk, Vanity and a Miser, shake their heads to show they are not ready to go.

Prague's most famous golem was said to be made from river clay by which rabbi?

Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the Maharal, is said to have shaped the golem to protect the ghetto from attack; legend has its remains still lying in the attic of the Old New Synagogue.

Graves lie stacked in layers for lack of space in which Prague cemetery?

The Old Jewish Cemetery could rarely buy more land, and Jewish custom forbids disturbing graves, so fresh earth was heaped over old burials, leaving today's crowded forest of headstones.

Which empress expelled the Jews from Prague in 1745, only to rescind the order three years later?

Maria Theresa accused Prague's Jews of disloyalty during the wartime occupation of the city, then gave way in 1748 to economic need and pressure from abroad, including Britain.

Which two Mozart operas premiered at Prague's Estates Theatre?

Don Giovanni and La clemenza di Tito both had their first nights here; Mozart finished Don Giovanni only the day before its 1787 premiere, then conducted it himself.

Wenceslas Square was known until 1848 as what?

The Horse Market, laid out when Charles IV founded the New Town in 1348, was renamed for the Czech patron saint during the 1848 revolution on the proposal of writer Karel Havlicek Borovsky.

The 'Good King Wenceslas' of the carol was a 10th-century Duke of Bohemia murdered by whom?

His brother Boleslaus had him cut down on his way to church, then repented within a few years and had the remains moved to Prague, where Wenceslas became the Czech patron saint.

Who took up residence in Prague Castle as first president of the new state created after World War I?

Tomas Masaryk, a philosophy professor, spent the war in exile winning Allied backing for independence, and the new assembly elected him president while he was still in America.

Which senior Nazi was assassinated in Prague in 1942 during Operation Anthropoid?

Reinhard Heydrich died eight days after Jozef Gabcik and Jan Kubis ambushed his open-topped car; in revenge the Nazis razed the village of Lidice and murdered or deported its people.

Prague's Letna metronome stands where a giant monument to whom was blown up in 1962?

Stalin's granite likeness was unveiled in 1955, two years after his death and shortly after its own sculptor had killed himself; once Khrushchev denounced Stalin it became a liability and was blown up.

Who led the reforms of the 1968 Prague Spring as First Secretary of the Communist Party?

Alexander Dubcek promised 'socialism with a human face'; after the invasion he was forced out, expelled from the party and given a job as a forestry official.

Which two Warsaw Pact members refused to join the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia?

Romania and Albania refused: Romania's leader publicly condemned the invasion, and Albania left the Warsaw Pact altogether the following month.

Crowds at Prague's 1989 Velvet Revolution rallies jingled what, making the sound a symbol of the protests?

Their keys: the jingling became the emblem of those weeks, which began when riot police broke up a student march on 17 November and ended with the Communist leadership resigning.

Which dissident playwright, a former political prisoner, became president of Czechoslovakia in December 1989?

Vaclav Havel was still in prison in May 1989; on 29 December a Federal Assembly still dominated by Communist-era deputies elected him president unanimously.

Prague became capital of the new Czech Republic in 1993 after what event?

The Velvet Divorce took effect on 1 January 1993 after prime ministers Vaclav Klaus and Vladimir Meciar agreed the split between themselves, with no referendum held.

Gaston, who escaped Prague Zoo in 2002 and swam to Germany, was what animal?

A seal: Gaston, a Cape fur seal, swam down the rivers into Germany, where he was caught, only to die on the way home; the zoo later put up a bronze statue of him.

Prague-born Franz Kafka wrote in which language?

German was the language of Kafka's family and schooling; he asked his friend Max Brod to burn his unpublished work, but Brod refused and published The Trial instead.

The Petrin lookout of 1891 is often described as a small version of what?

The Eiffel Tower so impressed members of the Club of Czech Tourists at the 1889 Paris world's fair that they had this roughly one-fifth-scale lookalike built on Petrin Hill by 1891.

Prague's Dancing House, completed in 1996, was designed by Vlado Milunic with which star architect?

Frank Gehry nicknamed it Ginger and Fred after the dancers Rogers and Astaire, then dropped the name for fear of importing 'American Hollywood kitsch' to Prague.

Prague Zoo is famous for helping save which endangered animal?

Przewalski's horse was last seen in the wild in 1969; Prague Zoo keeps the breed's international studbook and has been sending zoo-bred horses back to Mongolia since 2011.

Since 1980, fans have covered a Prague wall owned by the Knights of Malta with graffiti honouring which musician?

John Lennon's murder in 1980 prompted the first tribute; the authorities painted the wall over in green in 1981 and several times after, but the messages kept coming back.

The Prague Metro opened in 1974 with trains built in which country?

The Soviet Union supplied the cars after officials dropped a lighter Czech-built design; the heavier trains meant a steel grid had to be built into the Nusle Bridge to carry them.

Prague's Strahov sports ground holds what record?

Largest stadium in the world: Strahov was built for mass gymnastics displays, so its field is three football pitches long and three wide, with room for some 250,000 spectators.

Which Prague complex, home to a famed library, has logged daily temperatures since 1775?

The Klementinum's Jesuits were taking weather readings there by 1752; the daily record begun in 1775, two years after their order was suppressed, has run without a break ever since.

In which 1990s spy thriller is a team nearly wiped out during an operation in Prague?

Mission: Impossible sends Jim Phelps's team to Prague, where its members are killed one by one, leaving Ethan Hunt, seemingly the only survivor, as the prime suspect.

Sculptor David Cerny fixed giant crawling figures of what to Prague's Zizkov Television Tower?

Babies: ten fibreglass infants were attached to the tower in 2000 as a temporary artwork, then returned the following year as a permanent fixture.

Which future Nobel physicist took his first full professorship at Prague's university in 1911?

Albert Einstein wrote eleven papers during his time in Prague and that year first calculated how gravity bends light, before returning to Zurich in 1912.

Which astronomer, who came to Bohemia to serve the emperor, was buried in Prague's Tyn Church in 1601?

Tycho Brahe died after eleven days' illness, and his assistant Johannes Kepler went on to use his observations to work out the laws of planetary motion.

A medieval legend derives Prague's Czech name, Praha, from the word práh, meaning what?

Threshold: the legend, first written down in the 12th-century chronicle of Cosmas, is only one theory; the name's real origin is contested, with a word for land cleared by burning among the rivals.

Which student set himself on fire in Wenceslas Square in January 1969, five months after the Soviet-led invasion?

Jan Palach, a 20-year-old history student, died three days later; his funeral became a mass protest, and a second student, Jan Zajic, followed his example a month afterwards.

Under which Habsburg emperor were Prague's four towns merged into a single city in 1784?

Joseph II united the four towns; the Jewish quarter, added in 1850, was renamed Josefov in his honour because his Edict of Tolerance had eased restrictions on Jews.

Which Art Nouveau artist, famous for his Paris theatre posters, gave Prague the twenty giant canvases of the Slav Epic?

Alphonse Mucha came home in 1910 and spent some 18 years on the cycle, funded by American philanthropist Charles Crane, before presenting it to the city in 1928.