Pension lawyer meets world: Prague

As I said in my previous entry, a ticket to the Castle is valid for two days, so back I tramped, but now in glorious sunshine. A chance to take in what I hadn't managed first time, and to take some photos with blue sky in the background.

Old Town Bridge Tower

Charles Bridge

Little Quarter Bridge Tower

18th century statues of fighting giants at the castle gates

Second Courtyard of the Castle

Cathedral door

Mediaeval statue of St George

A nice 20th century bronze statue. You get that fine dark patina with bronze, but of course if regularly rubbed it stays golden. Look at what is golden here....

The South Gardens. Not on the tour guide's itinerary, so deserted, even though throngs of tour groups are only a 100 metres away. But they daren't venture off from their guides. Luckily for me..

The Castle Picture Gallery is also outside the tour groups itinerary, so is similarly quiet. Not a great collection as most of the Royal Collection was looted by the Swedes (yes, I know, nice change from being the Germans) in 1648, so this is largely what they left behind as not worth carting off. But that still leaves a Titian, some Rubens, Tintoretto, Veronese and a host of others who can paint better than me. So I wasn't complaining.

The Powder Tower houses an exhibition of Czech Military History, mostly camp looking shop mannequins dressed in uniform down the ages. The outside is better.

Just to the west of the Castle is an area of prestigious palaces, churches and monasteries

The Loreto

The Strahov Monastery is over 800 years old, but has been burnt, ransacked and remodelled on a number of occasions.

The Philosophical Hall

The Theological Hall (ie a library)

Nice globes

The Loreto is somewhat newer, going back only to 1626. This was commissioned by a nutty aristocrat to be a place of pilgrimage promoting the legend of Santa Casa. Even amongst the hordes of potty Christian legends this one takes some beating. The house where the Archangel Gabriel told Mary about Jesus is in the Italian town of Loreto. Err, didn't you think that was supposed to be in Nazareth, ie other side of the Med? Well yes, but of course it was transported to Loreto by angels in 1278. Of course. After a major victory by Catholics over Protestants, replicas of this house were built in Bohemia, this being the best, and having been built it then got surrounded by cloisters and what not and became a place of pilgrimage for the terminally gullible and so sucked in huge amounts of money which was of course the whole point anyway. Just get money off stupid people. And spend it on artwork. Like the bible says, doesn't it?

You see what I mean about nice doors?

A confessional.

And this is what all your charitable donations can buy.

More cherubs that you can shake a stick at.

I mean, ridiculous numbers of cherubs

A particularly gruesome crucifixion

And a much nicer one in ivory

The treasury here is pretty impressive. One of these monstrances contains over a thousand diamonds. Obviously one of the key teachings of the New Testament - collect more and more diamonds. Liberace would have been at home here, well apart from the gay thing...

One of the nicest places to visit up here (and again off the tourist routes by about 100 meters and so almost deserted) is the Sternberg Palace, a very attractive home for the National Gallery's collection of old masters, including a very fine Rembrandt of a scholar just pausing to turn to the viewer, plus El Greco, Rubens and many other big names.