Prague
Czech Praha
city, capital of the Czech Republic. Situated on the Vltava River, Prague is the country's major economic and cultural centre and has a rich architectural heritage that dates to the 9th century. From small original settlements, Prague has spread over hills, up tributary valleys, and along riverside terraces.
Prague has been prominent in the Czech Republic's economic life since the intensive development in the 19th century of the textile and machinery industries. Manufacturing is still the largest employer, followed by commerce, construction, education, culture, administration, transport and communications, and science and research. Principal industries include heavy and precision engineering and the production of food (including the famous Prague beer), electronics, and chemicals.
The Vltava River cuts a north-south path through central Prague. On its left (west) bank are located the Royal Garden, Hradcany (Prague Castle), and the Malá Strana (“Lesser Quarter?), which is blanketed by gardens and parks. The right (east) bank of the Vltava is dominated by the Staré Mesto (“Old Town,? dating from the 12th century) and the Nové Mesto (“New Town,? 14th century). Both are rich in historical monuments and churches, and the latter is responsible for Prague's description as the “city of a hundred spires.? The narrow streets, small taverns, and restaurants of the older sections contrast with the broad sweep of Václevské Square and with modern parks and housing developments. New housing estates, for example (referred to as “towns?), have been erected on the periphery to alleviate Prague's housing shortage.
Architectural treasures range from the Romanesque (the 10th-century Church of St. George) through the Gothic (St. Vitus' Cathedral and Týn Church) to the Baroque (the Vald-štejn and Clam-Gallas palaces), Rococo (the Golz-Kinský Palace), Classical (the Bedrich Smetana Museum and the Belvedere Palace), and Neoclassical (the National Museum and the National Theatre). The Old-New Synagogue and the Old Jewish Cemetery—Europe's oldest—testify to the strong Jewish tradition in Prague's life. The architectural harmony of the city has been enhanced by post-1945 planning, which has preserved the ancient core of the city and has supervised all modern building.
Prague is famed for its cultural life, particularly in music and literature. The music of the great Czech composers Bedrich Smetana, Antonín Dvorák, and Leoš Janácek is commemorated annually in a spring festival. The city's fine orchestras—the Prague Symphony and the Czech Philharmonic—are world-renowned. The writers Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Jaroslav Hašek, all born in Prague, became internationally famous. In the democratic revolution of 1989, which peacefully overthrew the communist government of Czechoslovakia, Vaclav Havel, a Prague playwright, became the nation's president.
Institutions of higher education include Charles University (1348), the oldest in central Europe. Scientific study, promoted by the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, is built on the tradition of such Prague scholars as Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, and Albert Einstein. The Academy of Arts and the Academy of Music are also located in the city.
Bus, streetcar, and subway provide public transportation. Rail lines radiate in all directions, and passenger boats ply the Vltava. The city's international airport is at nearby Ruzyne. Area city, 192 square miles (496 square km); metropolitan area, 301 square miles (780 square km). Pop. (1991 prelim.) city, 1,212,010; (1985 est.) metropolitan area, 1,256,092.
The early period
The foundation of the city
For thousands of years that portion of the Vltava's course where Prague was to rise was crossed by trade routes linking northern and southern Europe. The region is replete with Paleolithic relics, and Neolithic farmers inhabited the region from around 5000 to 2700 BC. Celts had settlements in the region from about 500 to 200 BC, including the fortified Závist, to the south of Prague. From the 4th to the 6th century AD, Slavs appeared on the Vltava banks, followed by the Avars.
The first settlement at what is now Prague has been traced to the second half of the 9th century. The oldest building was Vyšehrad (hrad, “castle?), set on a commanding right-bank hill. It was followed by what was to become Hradcany, set on an equally commanding left-bank site a little downstream. Legend (stirringly told in Smetana's opera Libuše) ascribes the foundation of Prague to a Princess Libuše and her husband, Premysl, founder of the Premyslid dynasty; legend notwithstanding, the Premyslids, in power from about 800 to 1306, consolidated a political base centred on Prague that was to be the nucleus of the Bohemian state and that enabled the natural trade advantages of the city site to develop under defensive protection. The dynasty included St. Wenceslas (Václav), who was murdered by his brother Boleslav in about 939 and whose statue now looks down upon the square to which his name has been given; and Boleslav I, whose reign (c. 936–967) witnessed the consolidation of power against a German threat. The little community flourished, and in 965 the Jewish merchant and traveler Ibrahim ibn Ya'qub was able to describe it as a “busy trading centre.? In 973 the bishopric of Prague was founded.
Medieval growth
The economic expansion of the community was reflected in the topography of the city. A market centre on the right bank, opposite Hradcany, developed into the Old Town (Staré mesto), particularly after the construction of the first stone bridge, the Judith Bridge, over the river in 1170. By 1230 the Old Town had been given borough status and was defended by a system of walls and fortifications. On the opposite bank, under the walls of Hradcany, the community known as Malá Strana (literally, “Small Side?) was founded in 1257. Following the eclipse of the Premyslids, the house of Luxembourg came to power when John of Luxembourg, son of the future emperor Henry VII, became king of Bohemia. His son, Charles IV, Bohemian king and Holy Roman emperor, had his capital at Prague from 1346 to 1378 and took considerable personal interest in the development of the city. In 1348 he founded Charles University, the first in central Europe, which was later to attract scholars and students from throughout the Continent. His reign also saw the growth of the planned New Town (Nové mesto) adjacent to the Old Town; construction of the Charles Bridge (1357, reconstructed in 1970) linking the Old Town and the Malá Strana; and the beginning (1344) of the great St. Vitus' Cathedral, which was not completed until 1929. Other buildings included the Carolinum (the central hall of the university), the town hall (destroyed in 1945), and several churches and monasteries in the New Town. The Jewish ghetto was also developed, and the bishopric was raised to an archbishopric in 1344.
By the 14th century Prague had become a major central European city, with the Czech money minted at nearby Kutná Hora serving as the hard currency of the entire region. Foreign merchants, notably Germans and Italians, became economically and politically powerful in uneasy alliance with the kings. The social order, however, became less stable because of the emergent guilds of craftsmen, themselves often torn by internal conflicts. The town paupers added a further volatile element.
The early period
The Reformation and the Thirty Years' War
Prague played a significant role in the Reformation. The sermons of Jan Hus, a scholar at the university, begun in 1402 at the now-restored Bethlehem Chapel and carrying forward the criticisms of the church developed by the English reformer John Wycliffe, endeared him to the common people but brought him into conflict with Rome; he was burned at the stake in the town of Constance (Konstanz, Ger.) in 1415. Popular uprisings in 1419, led by the Prague priest Jan Zelivský, included the throwing of city councillors from the windows of the New Town Hall in the incident known as the first Defenestration of Prague. The next year Hussite peasant rebels, led by the great military leader Jan Zizka, joined forces with the Hussites of Prague to win a decisive victory over the Roman Catholic king (later emperor) Sigismund at nearby Vítkov Hill.
The Gothic St. Vitus' Cathedral, Prague.
During the next 200 years, the wealthy merchants became ascendant once more, and the late Gothic architectural style flourished in many churches and buildings, reaching a peak in the fine Vladislav Hall of Hradcany. In 1526, however, the Roman Catholic Habsburgs became rulers of Bohemia and attempted to crush Czech Protestantism. The second Defenestration of Prague (1618), when the governors of Bohemia were thrown from the windows of the council room in Hradcany—one of the major events precipitating the Thirty Years' War—was followed by the decisive defeat of Protestant forces at the Battle of the White Mountain, near the city, in 1620. Twenty-seven Prague commoners and Czech noblemen were executed on the Staromestské Square in 1621; the city ceased to be the capital of the empire, was occupied by Saxons (1631) and Swedes (1648), and went into a decline hastened by two outbreaks of plague.
Evolution of the modern city
The return of more settled conditions in central Europe was marked by renewed economic growth, and Prague's population grew from 40,000 in 1705 to more than 80,000 by 1771. In 1784 the Old Town, the New Town, the Malá Strana, and the Hradcany complex were administratively united into one city. The merchants and the mostly German, Spanish, and Italian nobility who were active in and around Prague in this period had an enormous effect on both architecture and cultural life. Outstanding architects created magnificent palaces and gardens, and churches in the Prague version of the Baroque style sprang up throughout the city.
The onset of the Industrial Revolution had major effects in Prague. The first suburb (Karlín) was established in 1817, and in the next 20 years many factories sprang up, often in association with the coal mines and ironworks at Kladno and Králuv Dvur, not far away. The population exceeded 100,000 by 1837, and expansion continued after the city received its first railway eight years later. The rise of a working class and of strong nationalistic sentiments had a profound effect on the city; students, artisans, and workers took to the barricades against the ruling Austrians when revolution flared briefly in 1848. Within 20 years Czechs had won a majority on the City Council, and Czech cultural life was experiencing a renascence centred on Prague. The Neoclassical building of the National Museum and the National Theatre are only two examples of the building that took place in this period. By the 1890s the first electric streetcars (trams) were running in the city, urban services were being reorganized, and a replica of the Eiffel Tower overlooked the city from Petrín Hill.
In 1918 Prague became the capital of the newly independent Czechoslovak republic. By 1930 the population had reached 850,000. The city suffered a setback following the surrender of large parts of Bohemia and Moravia to Germany under the Munich Agreement of 1938. The citizens rose in revolt on May 5, 1945, and held the city until the Red Army arrived four days later. After World War II economic reconstruction began, careful planning was necessary to restore and preserve the historic monuments of the city centre. From the 1970s there was an increasing emphasis on the development of new satellite communities. The city continued to grow, although most of its population growth was attributable to annexation. The so-called Prague Spring of 1968, a short-lived excursion into liberalized social and governmental controls attempted by the government of Alexander Dubcek, was terminated by Soviet military action in August of that year.
In November 1989, Prague's Wenceslas Square became the cradle of the movement that swiftly ended four decades of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia. An officially sanctioned march in the city, commemorating the death of a student at the hands of Nazis in 1939, resulted in police violence and public disorder. Indignation at the current regime kindled further unrest, and in the second half of November students, young intellectuals, and later older people, totaling some half a million, demonstrated in the streets of the capital. Subsequent pressure led to the resignation of the entire Communist Party leadership and the formation of a coalition government headed by non-Communists. When Czechoslovakia itself was dissolved into its constituent republics on Jan. 1, 1993, Prague maintained its prominent international status as capital of the Czech Republic.
Additional reading
Geoffrey Moorhouse, Prague (1980), offers information on all aspects of the city. Guidebooks with information on history include Alois Svoboda, Prague (1965, reissued 1968), in English; Emanuel Poche, The Golden Lane on Prague Castle (1969; originally published in Czech, 1969), a description of the picturesque street of Hradcany; and František Kafka, Baedeker's Prague, trans. from German (1987). Photographic views of the city are presented in Jirí Dolezal and Evzen Veselý, Památky staré Prahy (1966), a survey of historical Prague, with brief commentary; Eugen Vasiliak, Nad Prahou: Prague Seen from Above (1966), a book of aerial photographs of old and new Prague with text in six languages; Miroslav Korecký, Prague in Colour (1976; originally published in Czech, 1975), which portrays the city's many architectural styles and major landmarks; and Bohumil Landisch and Vít Paloch, Praha: Praga: Prague (1982), with annotations in Czech, English, German, and Russian. A study of the city from the perspective of urban sociology is provided by F.W. Carter, “Prague and Sofia: An Analysis of Their Changing Internal City Structure,? ch. l5 in R.A. French and F.E. Ian Hamilton (eds.), The Socialist City: Spatial Structure and Urban Policy (1979), pp. 425–459. See also Jirí Hruza and Blahomír Borovicka, Prague: A Socialist City (1985). F.W. Carter, “Kafka's Prague,? ch. 2 in J.P. Stern (ed.), The World of Franz Kafka (1980), pp. 30–43, is an essay on Prague in Kafka's lifetime. Works describing the history of the city include Count (Franz) Lützow, The Story of Prague (1902, reprinted 1971); Josef Janácek (ed.), Dejiny Prahy (1964), covering the development and history of the city from the earliest times to 1960; Joseph Wechsberg, Prague: The Mystical City (1971), essays on Prague's history; and Josef Janácek, Malé dejiny Prahy, 3rd rev. ed. (1983), on history and architecture.
Jan Kazimour
Richard Horsley Osborne
Francis William Carter
Copyright © 1994-2002 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Sources
- Encylopedia Britannica 2002, Expanded Edition DVD
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