Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
three floors of remarkable cubist paintings and sculpture, as well as furniture, ceram-
ics and glassware in cubist designs.
HIST
HISTORIC B
ORIC BUILDING
UILDING
ESTATES THEATRE
Prague's oldest theatre and finest neo-classical building, the Estates Theatre is where
the premiere of Mozart's
Don Giovanni
was performed on 29 October 1787, with the
maestro himself conducting. Opened in 1783 as the Nostitz Theatre (after its founder,
Count Anton von Nostitz-Rieneck), it was patronised by upper-class German citizens
and thus came to be called the Estates Theatre - the Estates being the traditional no-
bility.
After WWII it was renamed the Tylovo divadlo (Tyl Theatre) in honour of the 19th-
century Czech playwright Josef Kajetán Tyl. One of his claims to fame is the Czech
national anthem,
Kde domov můj?
(Where is My Home?), which came from one of
his plays. In the early 1990s the theatre's name reverted to Estates Theatre. To see the
grand interior you'll need to attend a performance - the program is on the website.
HIST
HISTORIC B
ORIC BUILDING
UILDING
KLEMENTINUM
náměstí; guided tour adult/child 220/140Kč; 10am-5pm Apr-Oct, to 4pm Nov, Dec & Mar;
Staroměstská)
The Klementinum is a vast complex of beautiful baroque and rococo
halls, now mostly occupied by the Czech National Library. Most of the buildings are
closed to the public, but you can walk freely through the courtyards, or take a
50-minute guided tour of the baroque Library Hall, the Astronomical Tower and the
Chapel of Mirrors.
When the Habsburg emperor Ferdinand I invited the Jesuits to Prague in 1556 to
boost the power of the Roman Catholic Church in Bohemia, they selected one of the
city's choicest pieces of real estate and in 1587 set to work on the
Church of the
Prague's flagship of the Counter- Reformation. Its western facade faces Charles
Bridge, its sooty stone saints glaring down at the traffic jam of trams and tourists on
Křížovnické náměstí.
After gradually buying up most of the adjacent neighbourhood, the Jesuits started
building their college, the Klementinum, in 1653. By the time of its completion a cen-
