Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
strojů), an impressive collection that ranges from café orchestrions and fairground barrel or-
ganstoearlywaxphonographsandportablegramophones.Bestofall,though,isthefactthat
almost every exhibit is in working order - as the curators will demonstrate.
Nový Svět
Nestling in a shallow dip in the northwest corner of Hradčany,
Nový Svět
(meaning “New
World”, though nothing to do with Dvořák) provides a glimpse of life on a totally different
scale from Hradčanské náměstí. Similar in many ways to the Golden Lane in the Hrad, this
cluster of brightly coloured cottages, which curls around the corner into Černínská, is all
that'sleft ofHradčany'smedieval slums, painted upandsanitized inthe eighteenth andnine-
teenth centuries. Despite having all the same ingredients for mass tourist appeal as Golden
Lane, it remains remarkably undisturbed, save for a few swish wine bars and the odd hotel.
Černínský palác
Loretánské náměstí 5 • Not open to the public
Up the hill from Nový Svět, Loretánské náměstí is dominated by the phenomenal 135m-long
facade of the
Černínský palác
, decorated with thirty Palladian half-columns and supported
by a swathe of diamond-pointed rustication. For all its grandeur - it's the largest palace in
Prague, for the sake of which two whole streets were demolished - it's a pretty brutal build-
ing, commissioned in the 1660s by Count Humprecht Jan Černín, one-time imperial ambas-
sador to Venice and a man of monumental self-importance. After quarrelling with the mas-
ter of Italian Baroque, Giovanni Bernini, and disagreeing with Prague's own Carlo Lurago,
Count Černín settled on Francesco Caratti as his architect, only to have the finished building
panned bycritics as a tasteless mass ofstone. The grandiose plans, which were nowhere near
completion when the count died, nearly bankrupted future generations of Černíns, who were
eventually forced to sell the palace in 1851 to the Austrian state, which converted it into mil-
itary barracks.
SincetheFirstRepublic,thepalacehashousedthe
MinistryofForeignAffairs
,andduring
the war it briefly acted as the Nazi
Reichsprotektor
's residence. On March 10, 1948, it was
the scene of Prague's third defenestration. Just a week or so after the Communist coup,
Jan
Masaryk
, the only son of the founder of the Republic, and the last non-Communist in Got-
twald'scabinet, plunged15mtohisdeathfromthetop-floorbathroomwindowofthepalace.
Whether it was murder or suicide (he had been suffering from depression, partly induced
by the country's political path) will probably never be satisfactorily resolved, but for most
people Masaryk's death cast a dark shadow over the new regime.
