Tag: architecture

Prague – minus the tourists

The west front of St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague © Ricky Yates

Last Monday evening, Sybille and I took the tram from Podbaba to Vozovna Strešovice and from there, walked through the back lanes to Hradcanské namestí, the large square lying immediately to the west of Prague Castle. As we did so, the only other people we saw were a young couple who were walking the same way as we were and whom we thought were probably Russian. Whilst we can tell when people aren’t speaking Czech, we have yet to be able to clearly distinguish between other Slavic languages!

In front of the west gates of the castle, there was a small group of Spaniards with a native Spanish speaker as their guide. But as we entered the first two quadrangles of the Prague Castle complex, we were surrounded by the amazing array of architecturally beautiful floodlit buildings, including the west front of St. Vitus Cathedral, with hardly a soul in sight. We basically had the whole place to ourselves. We were enjoying Prague – minus the tourists!

This is our fourth winter since moving to Prague in September 2008. Therefore we knew from previous experience that, following the Epiphany weekend in early January, through until late March, Prague has what can best be described as its non-tourist season. It is the period when you can walk around all the amazingly attractive sights of the historic centre of Prague, with very few foreign visitors surrounding you. But even then on Monday evening, we were still astonished as to how few people there were around.

For anyone reading this blog and wondering when is a good time to visit Prague, the answer I would give is between now and the third week in March. And if you want a really good financial deal, be adventurous and come without having pre-booked accommodation. At this time of year, there are regularly signs outside of hotels in the city centre saying, “Rooms available tonight” at remarkably reasonable prices.

Of course, you need to come prepared for the weather. Normally by now, there would be snow on the ground. But as I wrote in my earlier post, ‘Winter weather and walks’, we still have yet to experience really cold weather this current winter.

As someone who has chosen to live in Prague, I realise how very easy it is to complain about how, for much of the year, the city can feel almost overwhelmed by the number of tourist visitors. And yet they make a major contribution to the Czech economy and keep a considerable number of people in employment.

Likewise, they also make quite a contribution to the life of St. Clement’s Church. It very rare for us to have a Sunday service without visiting tourists in the congregation. Nearly all of them express grateful thanks for the opportunity we give them to worship in English, whilst they are visiting Prague. And some of them are quite generous towards us financially which we greatly appreciate. However, you would be amazed at the variety of  currencies that appear in the collection!

The most recent example was Christmas Day morning 2011. For our Family Eucharist that day, we had a congregation of about 110 people. Of those, only about 25 were regular members of our worshipping community, as so many of them go back to their home countries over the Christmas season. All the rest were visitors spending Christmas in Prague.

I shall seek to make the most of the next two relatively tourist-free months in Prague. But I am very aware that much of what I enjoy living here only exists because Prague attracts so many visiting tourists.

 

Tábor

Tábor with the spire of the Church of the Transfiguration of our Lord © Ricky Yates

As part of my two weeks of annual leave following my return from the Eastern Archdeaconry Synod in Bucharest, Sybille and I spent a long weekend at the beginning of October, staying in Tábor, exploring this fascinating historical town and parts of the surrounding area of South Bohemia. During the whole time we were there, we were blessed by some wonderful ‘Indian Summer’ weather as can be seen in the accompanying photographs featuring very clear blue skies.

Tábor lies about 100 kilometres south-east of Prague and it took us less than two hours to drive there. After walking around the historic centre of the town, we eventually found excellent accommodation in Penzion Modrá ruže which has a gated back yard where we were able to securely park the car.

The historic centre of Tábor is perched on a steep hillside overlooking the Lužnice River and is surrounded on three sides by precipitous wooded slopes. In the fourteenth century, a castle was built here though all that remains of it is the Kotnov Tower by the west town gate which can be seen in my photo accompanying an earlier post.

Tábor proper was founded by the radical followers of Jan Hus in 1420, five years after he was burnt at the stake in Konstanz. The town was named after the Biblical Mount Tábor (Psalm 89. 12) which is thought by some to also be the mountain on which Jesus was transfigured. The Hussites sought to organise the town following the example of the very early Christian believers by holding everything in common ownership as described in Acts 2. 44-45. They joined together in communal work to build the town and its defences and it is often suggested that this extreme variety of nonconformity is what has given rise to the connotations we now associate with the word ‘Bohemian’.

Historic building in Tábor © Ricky Yates

 

 

 

Despite its defensive site, the forces of the radical Hussites of Tábor were eventually defeated at the Battle of Lipany in 1434 and thereafter, the significance of the town declined. Fortunately, much of the wonderful architecture of the period has survived.

These two photographs are of buildings that surround Žižkovo námestí, the main central square in Tábor, named after the Hussite leader Jan Žižka. Unfortunately, the Hussite Museum, having been closed for stocktaking the two days before we arrived, did not re-open at the weekend as according to its own website, it should have done. Instead, it was scheduled to re-open on Wednesday 5th October, the day after we left Tábor to return to Prague. However, not being able to visit it does give me a good excuse to re-visit Tábor some time in the future.

 

 

 

 

Hussite Museum building in the centre of Tábor © Ricky Yates

Tábor also features many buildings with sgraffito decoration. However, I did find it a little incongruous that that this wonderfully beautiful ancient building was now being used as a fast-food outlet!

Beautiful scraffito decorated building now used as a fast-food takeaway © Ricky Yates
Second World War memorial in Tábor featuring a Soviet soldier, machine gun over his shoulder, lifting a child into the air © Ricky Yates

 

 

 

In the more modern part of Tábor, to the east of the historic centre, I came across two examples of things I’ve previously written about in this blog. The photograph on the left is of a memorial commemorating the liberation of Czechoslovakia, (as it was then), from the occupying Nazi forces. It is a typical example of communist era architecture showing a Soviet soldier, machine gun over his shoulder, lifting a child into the air. Underneath is the correct date of the end of the Second World War, 8th May 1945. But as I explained in my earlier post entitled ‘Correcting History’, because the Nazi surrender was signed late in the evening of 8th May 1945, it was already after midnight in Moscow, thus meaning that the former Soviet Union and its satellite states, always celebrated VE Day (Victory in Europe Day) on 9th May each year.

Since the Velvet Revolution of 1989, VE Day is now celebrated and marked with a public holiday, on 8th May each year in the Czech Republic. If you look closely at the inscription in the second photograph, it is quite clear that the ‘8’ is far newer and shinier than the rest of the lettering. No doubt it replaced a previous ‘9’! Likewise, because this is a memorial erected in the Communist era, it originally featured the hammer and sickle emblem. This was clearly removed at some point after 1989 but, an outline of where it once was, can still clearly be seen on the stone work above the date.

 

 

The inscription with a new '8' and with the outline of the now removed hammer & sickle emblem still visible © Ricky Yates

Finally, despite promising not to feature anymore examples of Czenglish, or ‘bad English’ as one of my fellow cricketers thinks I should call it, I cannot help but post this photograph of a sign in Tábor that had Sybille & I in fits of laughter. Bearing in mind that Tábor is not so far from the Austrian border and German speaking visitors are quite numerous, it appears to be an advertisement in German for a ‘Nothing Club’!

A sign for the 'Nothing Club' in Tábor © Ricky Yates

Bucharest

View along a side street in Central Bucharest © Ricky Yates

I spent a further 24 hours in Bucharest following our Archdeaconry Synod meeting, not least because flying back to Prague on Monday afternoon was far cheaper than flying back on Sunday evening! I used the time exploring the city centre by bus and on foot, and I hope that these photographs will give readers of my blog, some impression of what Bucharest is like.

Looking at the photograph on the left, it would be very easy to think that it was taken in Paris or another French city, rather than in Bucharest. And many of the most attractive buildings dating from the latter half of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century do display a French architectural style. This is because of the strong French-Romanian links during this time period with many French architects working in Romania and Romanian architects training at French architectural schools.

Below are three more examples of attractive buildings in the French architectural style all located within Central Bucharest. As can be seen, they have each been renovated in recent times after many years of neglect during the communist era.

Romanian Atheneum, Bucharest © Ricky Yates
Central University Library, Bucharest © Ricky Yates
Military Officers Club, Bucharest © Ricky Yates

The French influence even extends to a small version of Paris’ Arc de Triomphe. The Romanian version pictured below, celebrates the re-unification of the country in 1918 at the end of the First World War. Alongside the photograph of Bucharest’s ‘Triumphal Arch’, is a view along another city centre side street which once more illustrates the influence of French nineteenth century architecture. However, the photograph also shows more recent Czech influence with the Staropramen Beer logo featuring on the sun awning and sign of the street-side bar-restaurant!

Triumphal Arch, Bucharest © Ricky Yates

Side street in Central Bucharest with a Staropramen Bar © Ricky Yates

However, as in Prague and the other capital cities of the former Warsaw Pact countries of Central and Eastern Europe, you cannot avoid seeing the impact of over forty years of Communist rule. Below is a photograph of Casa Presei Libere/Press House, a wonderful example of Stalinist-Baroque architecture, completed in 1956. During the period of Communist rule, all print media emanated from this building, hence it was always known informally as the ‘House of Lies’.

Casa Presei Libere/Press House, Bucharest © Ricky Yates

This building in the photograph below, is a large Communist era Conference Centre, built to facilitate the holding of Communist Party Congresses.

Communist era Conference Centre, Bucharest © Ricky Yates

The Communist Party leader of Romania from March 1965 until he was overthrown in the revolution of December 1989, was Nicolae Ceausescu. Following a visit to North Korea in the early 1970s, Ceausescu embarked upon an extraordinary scheme to refashion an entire section of Bucharest according to his own megalomaniacal vision. As part of the scheme, about one sixth of the capital’s buildings were demolished, many of considerable historicity including thirteen Churches.

The pinnacle of Ceausescu’s scheme was the construction of the second-largest building in the world (after the Pentagon in Washington), now known as the Palace of Parliament. Started in 1984 but never completed, it has 12 storeys and 3100 rooms and covers an area of 330,000 square metres.

Palace of Parliament, Bucharest © Ricky Yates

From the Palace of Parliament, a four kilometre-long boulevard was created, deliberately designed to be a few metres wider than the Champs–Élysées in Paris. All this was done to satisfy the egotistical whims of Ceausescu and his wife Elena, around whom was built a major personality cult.

The boulevard leading from the Palace of Parliament, Bucharest © Ricky Yates

Ceausescu was overthrown in the revolution of December 1989. Still under the delusion that he was popular with the Romanian people despite a revolt in the western city of Timisoara, Ceausescu tried to address the crowds from the balcony of the headquarters building of the Central Committee of the Communist Party on 21st December 1989. A few minutes into his speech, instead of cheers and applause, the crowd began to boo and heckle him. Unable to control the crowd, he withdrew from the balcony into the building.

The former headquarters of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Bucharest with the balcony from where Nicolae Ceausescu made his last speech © Ricky Yates

The crowd outside was broken up by military force using live ammunition which resulted in the death of many of the protesters. The following day, Ceausescu tried again to address the crowds who had once more gathered outside the building. This time, they responded by throwing rocks and missiles and eventually broke into the building, forcing him, together with his wife Elena, to flee by helicopter from the roof. A couple of days later, the couple were arrested, put on trial for two hours before an Extraordinary Military Tribunal, given death sentences and then shot by a three man firing squad.

Memorial to those killed in the December 1989 revolution outside the former Communist Party HQ © Ricky Yates

Fortunately, despite all that Ceausescu and his regime did to the city of Bucharest, many Orthodox Church buildings have survived. Here are two examples that I was briefly able to visit and photograph.

Cretulescu Church, Bucharest © Ricky Yates
Romanian Orthodox Church, Bucharest © Ricky Yates

And finally, here is a third example which, as you can see, is currently undergoing restoration work. This Church belongs to a Romanian Orthodox Convent and where several of us had the privilege of listening to a small group of young nuns sing Vespers on the evening of Sunday 25th September.

Romanian Orthodox Convent Church under restoration, Bucharest © Ricky Yates

Religious Art in Prague and judging by outward appearances

Samuel annointing David as King © Ricky Yates

Not all exterior art and sculpture on Prague buildings, as illustrated in my previous post about Prague architecture, is Greco-Roman in style and only featuring semi-naked figures. It is also possible to find many examples of religious art, usually featuring the Virgin Mary and the Infant Jesus, often accompanied by angels. However, the picture on the left shows an artistic relief on the outside of a building which had both Sybille and I mystified for some time as to what it was illustrating.

This relief is on the corner of a building in the heart of Prague which thousands of tourists, as well as city residents, walk past every day. It is in Na Mustku, a street that leads into the bottom of Václavské námestí / Wenceslas Square and adjacent to the major Metro station called Mustek. I think it was about the third time that we stopped and looked up at it that the penny finally dropped – it is an illustration of the Jewish High Priest Samuel, anointing David as King of Israel in succession to Saul.

The Biblical story of how Samuel came to anoint David as the future King of Israel, is to be found in the First Book of Samuel, chapter 16.  God tells Samuel that he is sending him to Bethlehem and that he will indicate to him when he gets there, which one of the sons of a man called Jesse, is to be the next king.

Within the story is one of my favourite verses of scripture. Seven sons of Jesse are lined up to pass before Samuel. The eldest son called Eliab, is tall, strong and good-looking and Samuel thinks to himself, ‘Surely this is the one God has chosen’.

‘But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things human beings look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart”’ 1 Samuel 16. v7, TNIV

The story continues with the other six sons passing before Samuel but with God indicating to him that none of them either, is the one he has chosen to be King. It is only when David, the youngest son of Jesse, is summoned from the fields where he has been tending the sheep, that God clearly points out that here is the future King and Samuel duly anoints him. Whilst I like the artwork illustrated here, I have to say that the artist has made David look little more than a toddler rather than a young man who can tend his father’s sheep!

It is so easy to make judgments about people purely based upon the way they look. Politicians are forever concerned about having the right image otherwise they fear they won’t get elected. In recent years, there has arisen a group of people who style themselves as ‘Image Consultants’, who will help you look and dress in a manner that they assure you will project the ‘right image’, whatever the ‘right image’ is meant to be. Of course, they will also charge you a substantial fee for doing so!

Sadly, many of us do concentrate purely on someone’s outward appearance, the way they appear, rather than finding out who they are and what motivates them. And much as I try to avoid making instant judgments about people based on the way they dress and look, I know that from time to time, I still do so.

Last summer, a lady walked into our Sunday Eucharist a little after the service had begun. Whilst I know that trying to judge a woman’s age is a dangerous occupation, I thought that she was probably somewhere in her fifties. But along with a fairly conservative blouse, she was wearing suede ankle boots, together with a rather short denim skirt. I have to admit that I immediately assumed her to be a visiting tourist who had stumbled upon an open Church and who would disappear again after five to ten minutes. Because we worship in a city centre Church, we do often get people who wander in at the back during services, because the doors are unlocked, and wander out again a few minutes later.

But this lady didn’t disappear – she stayed for the whole service and came forward and received Communion. And afterwards, she joined us for Coffee Hour in the hall on the third floor of Klimentská 18 across the road from the Church. And so it was that I spoke with her over coffee, asking who she was, where came from, and how had she found us.

The reply was delivered in a fairly broad antipodean accent. She was Dawn, from Ballarat, Victoria in Australia. She was touring Europe but was a regular Churchgoer and therefore had put ‘English-speaking Church, Prague’ into Google on Saturday evening, in order to find Christian worship to attend the following day. She told me how much she had enjoyed the service and her only complaint was that our Church website didn’t explain how to get to the Church by public transport. So, courtesy of Dawn, we have now inserted a link to the Prague Public Transport website as part of our ‘How to find us’ instructions, in order to address the issue that she raised.

Dawn also told me that she was going on to visit Turkey, in order to ‘follow in the footsteps of St. Paul’. And before I could say anything, she acknowledged that she knew full well that she would need to dress differently when travelling in rural Turkey. But today was a warm sunny summer’s day in Prague!

I felt duly rebuked after my conversation with Dawn. I had initially, completely misjudged her, purely based on her appearance. But God hadn’t done that – he saw and knew her motives. He did not look on her outward appearance, but instead, saw and understood the thoughts of her heart.

Dawn – if you should ever read this post, I apologise – especially if I misjudged your age! But also, I ask your forgiveness for initially making a judgement based solely on your outward appearance. After all, why shouldn’t a lady in her fifties wear a denim miniskirt with suede ankle boots, if she has the confidence to do so, especially on a warm summer’s day? And as I’ve said previously many times, when speaking to people at the Church door who are busy apologising to me for what they are wearing when coming to Church, “The Lord doesn’t look on the outside, the Lord looks at the heart”.

 

Prague Architecture with its amazing variety of decoration

Artwork on the exterior of Obecní Dum / Prague’s Municipal House © Ricky Yates

In my first post of 2011, in which I wrote about ‘Why I like living in Prague’, I explained that one reason was the amazing architecture and buildings to be seen whenever walking around the city centre or inner suburbs of the city. I also promised to write a future blogpost to illustrate my point, so what follows is in part, to keep me true to my word. This subject is also inevitably better illustrated than written about. So, as many people who leave comments or write private emails to me say how much they like my photographs, this post will be more pictures than words.

The photograph on the left is of artwork on the exterior of Obecní Dum / Prague’s Municipal House. The building is national cultural landmark and ranks as one of the most significant Art Nouveau buildings in Prague.

But it isn’t just on a few famous or significant buildings that such wonderful decoration can be seen. The two pictures below are of two buildings virtually next door to each other in the Prague suburb of Bubenec – well off the tourist trail.

Artwork on the exterior of a building in the Prague suburb of Bubenec © Ricky Yates
Artwork on the exterior of a building in the Prague suburb of Bubenec © Ricky Yates

Whilst this one below is in Senovázné námestí, within the city centre but again, in an area not overly frequented by tourists.

Artwork on the exterior of a building in Senovázné námestí, Prague © Ricky Yates

The two hotels pictured below are located in a more well-known part of Prague. They are situated side-by-side on Václavské námestí / Wenceslas Square and were both built in the late nineteenth / early twentieth century. As with so many other amazing buildings in Prague, since the fall of communism in 1989, they have been returned to their rightful owners and restored to their former glory. They also still function as the ‘Grand Hotel Europa’ and the ‘Meran Hotel’. I particularly like the intricate metalwork on the balconies of both buildings.

Hotel Grand Europa © Ricky Yates

Meran Hotel © Ricky Yates
Two ladies holding up a balcony © Ricky Yates

The other very noticeable feature of Prague architecture, is how many balconies and bay windows are held up and supported by carved figures, predominantly female ones. The photograph on the left, illustrates what I mean. However, it must be said that this example is relatively unusual. Why you may ask? Because both figures are fully clothed!

As you will observe when you scroll down, other female figures leave relatively little, if anything, to the imagination!

Topless ladies holding up a balcony © Ricky Yates

There are two further examples below which have suffered somewhat from the attention of the local pigeon population. If you look closely at the second picture below, you will see two pigeons sitting on the figure on the left.

Ladies holding up a bay window © Ricky Yates
Ladies holding up a bay window. Note the two pigeons perched on the figure on the left © Ricky Yates

Sometimes the figures are purely to beautify the building such as these two examples in contrasting artistic styles. But wherever you walk in the centre of Prague, there is always something of interest and beauty to see.

Two naked female figures surrounding a doorway © Ricky Yates
Topless female decorating the exterior of a building © Ricky Yates