Dark Prague: Alchemy, Executions and the Golem

Stand in the center of the square and look down at the ground in front of the Town Hall. Twenty-one white crosses. Each one marks an executed man. On June 21, 1621, the Habsburg Empire beheaded 27 leaders of the Bohemian revolt right here. The ceremony lasted four hours. Afterward, the heads of twelve of them were hung from the Bridge Tower for ten years — so all of Prague could see them from below. It was the end of Bohemian independence for three hundred years. The astronomical clock to your left was ringing as the heads fell. It has been ringing every hour since 1410.…

This gate witnessed one of the most brutal humiliations in Czech history. On March 15, 1939, Hitler entered Prague through this gate. There was no war. No official resistance. The Czech army was ordered not to fire. German troops marched past here while people watched from the sidewalks in silence or wept. Prague fell in six hours. The tower itself is nearly 600 years old — construction began in 1475. It was called "Powder" in the 18th century because it was used as a munitions depot. Before that, it served as the ceremonial entrance of Bohemian kings into the city.…

This is the oldest functioning synagogue in Europe. It was built in 1270. And according to legend, in the attic above — which has no public access — the Golem sleeps. Rabbi Löw created it in the 16th century from clay taken from the Vltava River to protect the ghetto's Jews from pogroms. He brought it to life with a sacred word. It was enormous, indestructible, and followed orders. When it was no longer needed, the rabbi removed the word from its forehead and the Golem collapsed. The body is still up there, they say, waiting to be awakened. No one has climbed up to check. Or no one who has…

Look at the gravestones. They are stacked, overlapping, leaning against each other. This cemetery has 12,000 visible gravestones — but underneath lie approximately 100,000 people buried in twelve superimposed layers. For centuries, the Jewish ghetto could not expand. Walls defined its limits. When the cemetery filled up, they dug deeper. Layer upon layer, generation upon generation, for four centuries. Rabbi Löw is buried here. People leave stones on his grave following Jewish custom — instead of flowers, which wither. Stones endure. It was the largest Jewish cemetery in Europe in active u…

Walk inside the synagogue and look at the walls. They are covered in names. Written by hand, in red and black, from floor to ceiling. Eighty thousand names. These are the Czech and Moravian Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Each name has a date of birth and a date of death — or the date they were deported to the camps, which was the same thing. The communists closed the synagogue in 1968, supposedly due to "leaks." They erased the names. When the regime fell in 1989, volunteers spent ten years writing them all back. Upstairs are drawings made by children from the Terezín concentration camp. …

The name "Golden Lane" comes from a legend: that King Rudolf II installed his alchemists here to produce gold. That's not true. It was actually built in the 16th century to house castle guards, who over time became craftsmen and goldsmiths. The gold came later, as tourist mythology. What is true: Franz Kafka lived in house number 22 during the winter of 1916-1917. He came to write after work. There was no heating. Here he wrote parts of "A Hunger Artist" and other stories. Rudolf II did exist. And he was obsessive about alchemy, astronomers, and the occult. He hired Tycho Brahe and Johannes…

This tower bears the name of its first prisoner. Dalibor of Kozojedy. He was a nobleman who in 1498 defended a group of rebelling serfs. He was captured and locked inside this dungeon, without light or human contact. Legend says that to endure his confinement he learned to play the violin. And that the sound reached the streets of the neighborhood, and people brought food and lowered it down on ropes. The violin kept him alive — and popular. In the end, he was executed anyway. But the story endured. Dvořák wrote an opera about him in 1868. The tower stands twenty-two meters tall and its wa…

On January 16, 1969, a 20-year-old student named Jan Palach doused himself in fuel at this exact spot and set himself on fire. He lived three days. Before dying he left a letter: he was protesting the Soviet occupation that had crushed the Prague Spring six months earlier. He wanted to wake up people who had resigned themselves. His funeral drew 800,000 people into the streets of Prague. The communist regime called it "the act of an unbalanced person." They covered the spot with concrete so no one could pay tribute. Twenty years later, in November 1989, the Velvet Revolution began in this v…