Hradcany - The Rough Guide to Prague - page 69

added to Charles IV's palace, but which had to be rebuilt after the 1541 fire, and has since
been Baroquified. The only interest here is in the remains of the Czech patron saint, Prokop
(Procopius), in an eighteenth-century wooden tomb by the north wall.
In the southwest corner of the hall, you can gain access to the Bohemian Chancellery
(Česká kancelář), scene of Prague's seconddefenestration . There's some controversy about
the exact window from which the victims were ejected, although it's agreed that they sur-
vived to tell the tale, landing in a medieval dung heap below, and - so the story goes - pre-
cipitating the Thirty Years' War. On the other side of the Vladislavský sál, to the right of the
Riders' Staircase, a door leads into the vaulted room of the Diet , whose (purely decorative)
ribsimitatethoseofthemainhall.Theroomislaidoutasifforaseventeenth-centurysession
of the Diet: the king on his throne, the archbishop to his right, the judiciary to his left, the
nobility facing him, and representatives from towns across Bohemia (with just one collective
vote) confined to the gallery by the window. However, the main attraction here is the case
containing replicas ofthe Czech crownjewels .Astaircase tothe left ofthe Riders' Staircase
takesyouuptothesparselyfurnishedroomsoftheNewLandRolls,whosewallsaretattooed
with coats of arms.
THE SECOND DEFENESTRATION
After almost two centuries of uneasy coexistence between Catholics and Protestants, mat-
ters came to a head over the succession to the throne of the Habsburg archduke Ferdinand,
a notoriously intolerant Catholic. On May 23, 1618 , a posse of more than one hundred
Protestant nobles, led by Count Thurn, marched to the chancellery for a showdown with
Jaroslav Bořita z Martinic and Vilém Slavata , the two Catholic governors appointed by
Ferdinand I. After a “stormy discussion”, the two councillors (and their personal secret-
ary, Filip Fabricius) were thrown out of the window. As a contemporaneous historian re-
counted: “No mercy was granted them and they were both thrown dressed in their cloaks
with their rapiers and decoration head first out of the western window into a moat beneath
the palace. They loudly screamed ach, ach, oweh! and attempted to hold onto the narrow
window-ledge,butThurnbeattheirknuckleswiththehiltofhissworduntiltheywereboth
obliged to let go.”
Příběh Pražského hradu (The Story of Prague Castle)
Daily: April-Oct 9am-5pm; Nov-March 9am-3pm •140Kč, or included in the velký okruh ticket • pribeh-
hradu.cz
Aslightly longwinded butengaging exhibition, TheStoryofPragueCastle ishousedinthe
palace's subterranean Gothic and Romanesque chambers. Things kick off in the classically
chronological Eastern European fashion with dusty mammoth bones and prehistoric finds
that prove the castle promontory has been inhabited for at least five thousand years. Things