Jewish Town

We are at the limit between the Jewish Town (Josefov) and the Old Town. There were already Jewish People settled in Prague in the 10th century. The first houses were built in the outer bailey of the Prague Castle. In the spirit of medieval Anti-Semitism, the Jewish Ghetto was separated from the Old Town by gates. The revolutionary year of 1848 finally gave them the freedom to live where they chose and they consequently spread out through the entire Prague. In 1850, Josefov became the fifth municipal quarter of Prague.
Today, Josefov is a religious and cultural centre, and Jews live where they please. A plaque on the corner house reminds us that this is Franz Kafka´s birthplace (1883), a prominent Jewish

The name of the street reminds us of provost of the Jewish Town Mordechai Maisel who financed Renaissance builing in the ghetto. He founded the Maisel Synagogue in 1590. The original Renaissance synagogue was heavily damaged by the 1689 fire. It was reconstructed in a Neo-Gothic style at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. It is not used for services anymore; it is now used by the Jewish Museum as exhibition space.
The Maisel Synagogue holds a permanent exhibition

The late Gothic Pinkas Synagogue is the second oldest synagogue in the quarter of Josefov. It was founded at the end of the 15th century, directly in the ghetto. It is situated at the entrance to the Jewish Cemetery, which will be the subject of one of our future tour stops. A Monument to the Czech and Moravian Jews was made in the synagogue after the World War II, dedicated to the victims of Nazi persecution. The names of 80,000 murdered Jews are hand-written on the walls of the synagogue. On the first floor, there is an exhibition of children's paintings from the Terezín concentration camp, which is a very touching evidence of

Jan Palach Square got its name spontaneously in memory of Jan Palach, a victim of the protests against the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact troops in 1968. He was a Charles University student of Philosophy. He burned himself on January 16th 1969 in Wenceslas Square (he died on January 19th 1969; please see his memorial plaque made by O. Zoubek). However, soon after the occupation, the Communist regime returned the square to its previous name "Krasnoarmějců Square" (Red Army Square), which referred to the temporary burial of some Red Army soldiers killed during the liberation of Prague in 1945. But the Prague residents had not forgotten,

Find the spot in the wall from which you can have a look at the Jewish cemetery.

The park next to the Old-New Synagogue has a statue of Moses made by A. Bílek. This is the kneeling figure of Moses writing Adam´s name, symbolizing the beginning, fall and redemption of humankind. The bronze sculpture is placed on a pedestal made of polished stone. The sculptor was influenced by both the Neo-Baroque and the Art Nouveau style. The original from 1905 was destroyed by the Nazis and

Let´s leave the Jewish topic aside for a moment. The Hotel Intercontinental, a Neo-Functionalist building from between 1970 and 1974, has on the top floor a panoramic restaurant called "Zlatá Praha" (Golden Prague). The Art Nouveau bridge built between 1906 and 1908 is named after Bohemian writer S. Čech. It is the only arched iron bridge in Prague. The City of Prague has preserved much of its greenery, which is even clearer on top of the Letná Hill. There is a terrace with a kinetic sculpture called Metronom. Older Prague residents certainly remember that here, between 1955 and 1962 stood a hideous monumental statue of Joseph Stalin,

Here we will be caught up by a contrast of the Jewish Spanish Synagogue and the Christian church of St. Spirit, the history of which goes back to the 14th century.
The territory around the church of St. Spirit is a core of the Jewish Town of Prague. The Jews of the eastern rite had lived here since the 10th century. They lived in a strict isolation from their fellow believers of the western denomination, who had concentrated around the Old-New Synagogue. This was also possible because both of the Jewish quarters were partitioned by a Christian territory, reaching all the way here to the Old Town marketplace where

The statue of Franz Kafka is modern, created betwwen 2000 and 2003. The statue is made of bronze and it is 375 centimeters tall. This work of art truly has Kafka's style. The author is contemporary painter and sculptor Jaroslav Róna. The sculpture consists of two bodies, the lower part is an empty male tuxedo that carries on his shoulders ( a child) the figure of the actual Franz Kafka. The sculptor was inspired by Kafka's short story entitled "Popis Jednoho Zápasu" (Description of a Match). The sculptor chose this "split" design

This avenue crosses the Jewish town and connects the Old Town Square to the Cechuv Bridge across the Vltava River. The modern street, which name evokes the style of the French metropolis, was planned within the remodeling of the former Jewish ghetto in the late 19th century. Fancy apartment flats, with an architecture that

The Old-New Synagogue is the oldest preserved monument of the Jewish Prague and simultaneously one of the most significant ancient European synagogues. The building is one of the most impressive structures of the Czech early Gothic. It was built in the last third of the 13th century. It was originally called the New Synagogue or the Great Synagogue. It got the name "Old-New" when another synagogue was built during the 16th century. A Jewish legend says that the foundation stones of the synagogue were supposedly brought in by angels from the demolished Jerusalem temple,

Today the Jewish Town Hall houses the headquarters of the Jewish religious community. It is mentioned as early as in 1541. The current appearance of the city hall is late Baroque. It has two clocks – one with Hebrew numerals and an anticlockwise movement of the hands, and the other one with Roman numerals. Next to the city hall stands the High Synagogue from 1568. Its name refers to the fact that it is not situated on the ground floor but on the first floor, it used to be connected to the Town