Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
tomáš Garrigue Masaryk
(1850-1937)
Tomáš
Masaryk was the George Washington of Czechoslovakia.
He founded the first democracy in Eastern Europe at the end
of World War I, uniting the
Czechs and the Slovaks to create
Czechoslovakia. Like Václav Havel
70 years later, Masaryk was a poli-
tician whose vision extended far
beyond the mountains enclosing
the Bohemian basin.
Masaryk was born into a poor
servant family in southern Moravia.
After finishing high school, the vil-
lage boy set off to attend univer-
sity in Vienna. Masaryk earned his
Ph.D. in sociology just in time for
the opening of the Czech-language
university in Prague. By that time,
he was already married to an American music student named
Charlotta Garrigue, who came from a prominent New York family.
(The progressive Tomáš actually took her family name as part of
his own.) Charlotta opened the doors of America's high society
to Masaryk. Among the American friends he made was a young
Princeton professor named Woodrow Wilson.
Masaryk was greatly impressed with America, and his admi-
ration for its democratic system became the core of his gradu-
ally evolving political creed. He traveled the world and went to
Vienna to serve in the parliament. By the time World War I broke
You can rent an
audioguide
for 200 Kč (good all day) by picking
it up at the main desk in the TI, located across from the cathedral
entrance—show this topic for this rate (promised through 2009
by the manager Tomáš Kuha). The audioguide also entitles you to
priority entrance into the cathedral—when the line in front of the
entrance is long, walk to the exit door on the right and show the
audioguide to the guard to be let in.
Crowd-Beating Tips:
Huge throngs of tourists turn the
castle grounds into a sea of people during peak times (9:30-12:30).
St. Vitus Cathedral is the most crowded part of the castle com-
plex. If you're visiting in the morning, be at the cathedral entrance
promptly at 9:00, when the doors open. For 10 minutes, you'll have
the sacred space for yourself (after about 9:15, tour guides jockey-
ing unwieldy groups from tomb to tomb turn the church into a
noisy human traffic jam). Late afternoon is least crowded.
Castle Gate and Courtyards
—Begin at Castle Square. From
here, survey the castle—the tip of a 1,500-foot-long series of
