|
Hradcanske namesti (Castle Square) fans out from the castle's main gates, surrounded by the oversized palaces of the old nobility. A passage down the side of the Archbishop's Palace leads to the early eighteenth-century Sternberk Palace (Sternbersky palac; Tues-Sun 10am-6pm), housing the National Gallery's relatively modest Old European art collection (ie non-Czech), which primarily consists of works from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the most significant of which is the Festival of the Rosary by Durer. Nestling in a shallow dip to the northwest, Novy Svet is all that is left of the medieval slums, painted up and sanitized in the nineteenth century. Uphill from Novy Svet, Loretanske namesti is dominated by the brutal 150-metre-long facade of the Cernin Palace . The facade of the Loretto (Tues-Sun 9am-12.15pm & 1-4.30pm), immediately opposite, is a perfect antidote, all hot flourishes and twirls, topped by a tower which lights up like a Chinese lantern at night - and which by day clanks out a tuneless version of the hymn We Greet Thee a Thousand Times on its 27 Dutch bells. However, the two-storey cloisters and chapels are just the outer casing for the main focus of the complex, the Santa Casa, a shrine that was built in 1626-31. You can get some idea of the shrine's popularity with the Bohemian nobility in the treasury ; its padded ceilings and low lighting create a kind of giant jewellery box for the master exhibit, a ghastly Viennese silver monstrance studded with 6,222 diamonds and standing over three feet high. A short way west up Pohorelec from Loretanske namesti, the chunky remnants of the eighteenth-century fortifications mark the edge of the old city. Close by sits the Strahov Monastery (Strahovsky klaster), which managed to escape the 1783 dissolution of the monasteries and continued to function until the Communists closed down all religious orders in 1948. Through the cobbled courtyard, past a small church and chapel, is the monastery proper, famous for its rich collection of manuscripts and its ornate libraries (daily 9am-noon & 1-5pm). Leaving through a narrow doorway in the eastern wall, you enter the gardens and orchards of the Strahovska zahrada , from where you can see the whole city in perspective.
Your Tip for Beyond Castle Square
Help other backpackers! Write your own guides and backpacking tips to Beyond Castle Square - they will appear instantly on this page - Please only write a tip/guide to Beyond Castle Square - visit the main Beyond Castle Square forum to ask a question!
Please do not post links to your site here (they won't work) - please use the Beyond Castle Square webguide section below! Thanks.
| 
