Czech Republic: Prague, A City Written in Layers

Some trips leave you with hundreds of photographs. Others leave you with a few details that become more interesting as time goes by. My own record of Prague falls into the second category. I never kept a photo album from my visit, but Google Timeline preserved a handful of places that tell me I was there. Now my son Chase has walked the same streets and sent back the pictures I never took.

The Prague Orloj, mounted on the south wall of the Old Town Hall, was installed in 1410. It is the third oldest astronomical clock in the world and the oldest one still operating. Its earliest mechanism and astronomical dial are credited to clockmaker Mikuláš of Kadaň working with Jan Šindel, a professor of mathematics and astronomy at Charles University.

The upper dial is a small model of the medieval sky. It shows the positions of the Sun and Moon, the zodiac, and several kinds of time at once, including Old Czech time, which counts the hours from sunset. The calendar dial below was added around 1490, the same period when the Gothic sculptures were added to the facade.

A popular legend says the city council blinded a later clockmaker, Master Hanuš, so he could never build a rival clock, and that he took revenge by stopping the mechanism. Historians treat the story as folklore, but it is still told to almost every crowd in the square.

The parade of the Twelve Apostles that appears at the top of every hour was added during a restoration in the 1860s, beside the figure of Death ringing his bell. In May 1945, during the Prague Uprising, fire badly damaged the Old Town Hall and the clock. It was repaired and running again by 1948, and it remains the centerpiece of Old Town Square.

My Timeline shows two visits each to Hilton Prague Old Town and New Town, and one stop at Masarykovo nádraží, the historic railway station. The hotel put me close to the heart of the old city. The remaining pins suggest movement through the urban core, although they do not establish a complete itinerary.

Prague is a city best understood as accumulated history. Charles IV founded its New Town in 1348, expanding a medieval capital that would become one of Central Europe's great cultural centers. Masarykovo nádraží opened in 1845, when railways were changing the way European capitals connected with one another. The Vltava ties it all together, running past the Old Town and under Charles Bridge.

I am not going to pretend I remember every street, meal, or landmark from a trip more than a decade ago. For years the map was enough to preserve Prague as a chapter in my travels. Thanks to Chase, the chapter now has pictures, and an even better reason to return someday together.