Prague

Prague
Excerpted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Prague (Praha), the Capital and largest city (hlavní mesto) of the Czech republic.
Situated on the Vltava river in central Bohemia.
Population 1,165,581 (2003)
Area 496 km²
Founded 965
Since 1992, the historic center of Prague has been included in the UNESCO list of world heritage sites.

History
Founded in the latter part of the 9th century, Prague soon became the seat of the kings of Bohemia, some of whom also reigned as emperors of the Holy Roman Empire in later times.
The city flourished during the 14th century reign of Charles IV, who ordered the building of the New City, the Charles Bridge, Saint Vitus Cathedral: the oldest gothic cathedral in central Europe which is actually inside the Castle, and the Charles University: the oldest university in central Europe north of the Alps.
Prague was then the third-largest city in Europe.
The four independent boroughs that had formerly constituted Prague were eventually proclaimed a single city in 1784.
Those four cities were Hradcany (the Castle District, west and north of the Castle), Malá Strana (the Lesser Town, south of the Castle), Staré Mesto (the Old Town, on the east bank opposite the Castle) and Nové Mesto (the New Town, further south and east).
The city underwent further expansion with the annexation of Josefov in 1850 and Vysehrad in 1883, and at the beginning of 1922, another 37 municipalities were incorporated, raising the city's population to 676,000.
Prague suffered from serious flooding in August 2002, with parts of the city having to be evacuated.
The floods caused a lot of damage, but fortunately no major landmarks (such as the Charles Bridge) were destroyed.

Sights
Prague is a popular tourist destination.
There are lots of old buildings, many with beautiful murals on them.

• The astronomical clock in the Old-Town Square of Prague
• Staré Mesto
• Various places connected to Franz Kafka
• Malá Strana
• Hradcany with the Prague Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral
• the Charles Bridge
• the Lennon Wall
• Old Town Square and the Astronomical Clock
• Josefov (the old Jewish quarter)
• Wenceslas Square
• National Museum
• Vysehrad castle
• Petrinska Rozhledna, an observation tower, which is nearly a 1:5 copy of Eiffel Tower
• TV Tower with observation deck
• Charles University founded in 1348
• the Metronome, a giant, functional metronome that looms over the city

• (http://www.prague-city.cz/) Official Website
  
• (http://wikitravel.org/en/article/Prague) Prague travel guide at Wikitravel

This page was retrieved and condensed from (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague) in July, 2005
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (see Copyrights for details).

Hui Chin and I visited Prague at the beginning of our trip in 2005.

Our entire trip of 9 weeks was spoilt in the first hour of visiting Prague, when some "gutter slime thieves" snatched Hui Chin's purse on the Metro Station with a large amount of our money, credit cards and many other things in it.

Due to the fact, that very few people, including the Police could understand English (at least the ones we tried to talk to), we couldn't even report our loss.

After hours of trying, a very nice Hostel Receptionist let us use her own mobile phone to try to report the loss of Hui Chin's credit cards, without much result, being a weekend and everything, especially the banks being closed.

We had to email our son in New Zealand from Poland the next day to cancel the credit cards as we were just didn't get any co-operation at all in Prague, even with the help of the kind receptionist, we couldn't find any Cyber Cafe open either, due to lack of understanding or our unfamiliarity with the city.

We couldn't get out of the place quick enough.

Some of my photos of Prague.

You can click on these photos for an enlargement

Prague	Prague	Prague	Prague
Prague	Prague	Prague	Prague
Prague	Prague	Prague	Prague
Prague	Prague	Prague	Prague
Prague	Prague	Prague	Prague

Prague trams

Prague trams	Prague trams	Prague trams

Prague trains

Prague trains

Site Index            Back to Top            Photos Index

Thanks for coming, I hope you have enjoyed it, will recommend it to your friends, and will come back later to see my site developing and expanding.

I'm trying to make my pages enjoyable and trouble free for everyone, please let me know of any mistakes or trouble with links, so I can fix any problem as soon as possible.

These pages are best viewed with monitor resolution set at 640x480 and kept simple on purpose so everyone can enjoy them across all media and platforms.

Thank you.

You can e-mail me at Webmaster