Prague Castle

What you see

Two giant stone figures on the gateposts, each in the act of clubbing a fallen enemy — the Fighting Giants. Beneath them, guards in pale blue uniforms stand motionless in sentry boxes. Beyond, through the archway, is a plain courtyard and then a second, older gate.

The story

Prague Castle is listed by the Guinness World Records as the largest ancient castle complex in the world, about 570 metres long and 130 wide, with an area of around 70,000 square metres. It is not one building but a small walled city, with three courtyards, a cathedral, a convent, palaces, a basilica, gardens and an alley of tiny houses. For more than a thousand years this has been the seat of power in Bohemia: princes, kings, Holy Roman Emperors, Czechoslovak presidents, Nazi Reich Protectors, Communist leaders, and today the President of the Czech Republic.

When the president is in residence, the presidential flag flies from the roof. You are standing in the First Courtyard, one of the newest parts. It was laid out between 1753 and 1775 for Empress Maria Theresa, who wanted the sprawling medieval castle to look like a proper imperial palace, and she had the western front made uniform and calm, as if it had all been built at once.

The grand entrance is the Gate of the Giants, crowned by two huge stone figures in the middle of a fight, each clubbing a fallen enemy with a raised fist. The sculptures show the Battle of the Titans, and they remind you that the gate is not a place for arguing. Beyond them, a second gate, the Matthias Gate, leads to the Second Courtyard.

It was built in 1614 for Emperor Matthias, and it is considered the oldest early baroque gate in the city, even though the buildings around it are older still. Look at the guards. They stand motionless in their sentry boxes at the gates and, at noon, take part in a changing of the guard with a brass fanfare, which is one of the most watched free events in the city.

Their pale blue uniforms were designed in 1990 by Theodor Pištěk, the costume designer who won an Academy Award for the film Amadeus. When Václav Havel became president after the Velvet Revolution, he entrusted the whole new uniform collection to him. The idea was to give the castle guard a look that belonged to a new democratic country, not to the old regime.

It is a very Prague story, that a film costume designer and a playwright-president dressed the guards. The courtyard is also a good place to understand how the castle works as a symbol. During the First Republic, President Masaryk invited the Slovenian architect Jože Plečnik to modernise the castle and gardens, and he left his mark in details: granite, flagpoles, stairs.

Under the German occupation, the castle was the seat of Reinhard Heydrich and the Reich Protectors. After 1948 it housed the Communist government. Since 1993 it has been the home of the head of the Czech state.

Almost every political change in the Czech lands has played out in these courtyards in some form, which is why the Czechs often use the word castle to mean the president and his office, not just the building. When you walk through the Matthias Gate into the Second Courtyard, you are entering the older part of the complex, and the story continues from there. The story of the castle starts in the late ninth century, when its first walled building, the Church of the Virgin Mary, was built here, around 870 to 880 by most accounts.

In the tenth century Saint George's Basilica followed. In the fourteenth century Charles the Fourth rebuilt the Old Royal Palace in the Gothic style and began the great cathedral that dominates the skyline. Under King Vladislav Jagiellon the architect Benedikt Ried built Vladislav Hall between 1493 and 1502.

In 1541 a huge fire destroyed much of the castle. Then the Habsburg emperor Rudolf the Second made it his main residence and founded a new northern wing with the Spanish Hall for his art collections. In 1618 an event here changed Europe: the famous defenestration of Prague, when rebel nobles threw royal councillors out of a castle window.

It started the Bohemian Revolt, which grew into the Thirty Years' War. In 1648 Swedish forces looted works from Rudolf's collection. In 1918 the castle became the seat of the head of state of the new Czechoslovak Republic, under Tomáš Masaryk, and the architect Jože Plečnik renovated parts of the palace and gardens.

During the Nazi occupation Reinhard Heydrich used the castle as his headquarters. He was ambushed on the twenty-seventh of May 1942 while travelling towards it, and died about a week later. After the communist coup of 1948 the castle housed the offices of the communist government.

Since 1993 it has been the residence of the Czech head of state.