Peace from Prague

Today was our last day in Prague and we had three things we wanted to do do before leaving:

• Visit the Vysehrad Castle and its Slavin cemetery right above our hotel.
• See the Jewish District and visit the sights there.
• Tour the Mucha Museum, dedicated to the works of Alphonse Mucha.

The Vysehrad Castle is on a huge plateau that looks out over Prague from the south of the city. Our hotel is right below the castle walls. So, after breakfast we climbed the walls and looked out over the city. Our hotel is the white building on the right. You get an idea about how high the castle walls are.

Next to the castle church is a famous cemetery containing the graves of Mucha as well as the writer Kafka.

The grave I was interested in was that of Karel Capek, the Czech writer whose 1920 play R.U.R., (Rossum's Universal Robots) introduced the word robot. His name was the inspiration behind Karel the Robot, the simulation system developed by UCI professor Richard Pattis.

The Basilica of St Peter and St Paul on the top of the hill was originally built in 1070, but burned down and was rebuilt in its present Gothic form in 1249. The ornamentation is really striking. Here's a picture of one of the doors.

The interior of the church is even more striking (although obviously not ancient). 

Every inch of the walls, pillars and ceilings is covered with the ornate, flowing decoration of the painter František Urban and his wife Marie Urbanová-Zahradnická inspired by Alfonse Mucha. 

Here is a fresco from one of the pillars. According to Wikipedia: nameless winged women flank the archways from the nave and fill the vault sections of the arcades. Up the pillars and along every picture’s border run floral patterns and colorful ribbons. The vivid greens and browns which cover the entirety of the interior create a feeling of being inside a forest. The ceiling of the nave is dark green, as if it is a canopy in shadow. Even the brown wooden benches on the ground for the beholders of church services are ornately carved with oak leaves.(Wikipedia)

After our visit to the castle, we headed downhill to the center of town for lunch and to visit the Jewish Quarter. This year, though, Shmini Atzeret (the Eighth Day of Assembly) and Simchat Torah (the Day of Celebrating the Torah) started today, so all of the Jewish museums and synagogues were closed until Wednesday. We were able to use our guidebook to see the buildings from the outside, but weren't able to go inside any of them, including the famous Jewish cemetery or the Old Synagogue of Golem fame.

 After a nice relaxing lunch, we headed over to the Mucha Museum, our last stop.

Those of you who remember San Francisco's Fillmore District of 1967 will remember this poster, or perhaps one very much like it. This is the work of Alphonse Mucha, the Prague artist who was one of the founders of Art Nouveau of the early 1900s and who revolutionized poster art while working in Paris.

In San Francisco in the 1960s, poster artists such as Wes Wilson, Victor Moscoso and Rick Griffin were often inspired by the Art Nouveau style of artists like Alphonse Mucha – indeed his artworks were often reworked in posters.

Kathy tried to take some pictures inside and was reprimanded by one of the attendants. When we got outside, though, we found some examples on the front of the museum and took a picture anyway.

On the way back we stopped for dinner. Now we're getting packed up and in the morning we'll head out for Erfurt Germany, the home of Martin Luther.