Prague

Prague (Czech: Praha) is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated on the Vltava river in central Bohemia, it is home to approximately 1.2 million people. (It can be derived from jobs statistics, however, that an additional 300,000 work there without having registered as residents.)

Nicknames for Prague have included "city of a hundred spires", "the golden city", "the Left Bank of the Nineties", the "mother of cities", and "the heart of Europe". Since 1992, the historic center of Prague has been included in the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.

History

The area on which Prague was founded has been settled since the Paleolithic Age. Around 200 BC the Celts had a settlement in the south called Závist, but later they were replaced (either expelled or assimilated) by Germanics. The Slavs conquered the site from the 4th century AD onwards, though for a period they were subdued by the Mongolian Avars.

According to legend, Prague was founded by the Princess Libuše and her husband, Přemysl, founder of the dynasty with the same name. Whether this legend is true or not, Prague's first nucleus was founded in the latter part of the 9th century as a castle on a hill commanding the right bank of the Vltava: this is known as Vyšehrad ("high castle") to differentiate from the castle which was later erected on the opposite bank, the future Hradčany. Soon the city became the seat of the Kings of Bohemia, some of whom also later reigned as emperors of the Holy Roman Empire. It was an important seat for trading where merchants coming from all Europe settled, including many Jews, as recalled by the Jewish merchant and traveler Ibrahim ibn Ya'qub in 965. The city became a bishopric in 973.

King Vladislav II had the first bridge on the Vltava - the Judith Bridge - built in 1170, though it crumbled in 1342. The Charles Bridge was later built on its foundations.

In 1257, under King Otakar II, Malá Strana ("Lesser Quarter") was founded in Prague in the future Hradčany area as the district of the Germans, who had the right to administer the law autonomously, referring to the Magdeburg legislation. The new district was on the opposite bank to the Staré Město ("Old Town"), which had then borough status and was defended by a line of walls on fortifications.

The city flourished during the 14th century reign of Charles IV, of the new Luxembourg dynasty. He ordered the building of the New Town (Nové Město) adjacent to the Old Town. The Charles Bridge was erected to connect the new district to Malá Strana. Monuments by Charles include also Saint Vitus Cathedral, the oldest Gothic cathedral in central Europe inside the Castle, and the Charles University. The latter is the oldest university in central Europe. Prague was then the third-largest city in Europe. Under Charles Prague was the capital of the Holy Roman Empire, and its rank was elevated to that of archbishopric. It had also a mint and German and Italian merchants, as well as bankers, in the city. The social order, however, became more turbulent owing to the rising power of the craftsmen's guild, themselves often torn by internal fights, and the presence of increasing number of poor people.

Under King Wenceslas IV - Václav IV - (1378-1419) Jan Hus, a theologian and lector at the University, held his sermons in Prague. From 1402 he summoned his followers to the Bethlehem Chapel, speaking in Czech to enlarge as much as possible the diffusion of his ideas about the reformation of the church. Having become too dangerous for the political and religious establishment, Hus was burned in Constance in 1415. Four years later Prague experienced its first defenestration, when the people rebelled under the command of the Prague priest Jan Želivský and threw the city's counselors from the New Town Hall. Hus's death had spurred the so-called Hussite revolt. In 1420 peasant rebels, led by the famous general Jan Žižka, along with Hussite troops from Prague, defeated the Bohemian King Sigismund (Zikmund, son of Charles IV), in the Battle of Vítkov Mountain.

In the following two centuries Prague strengthened its role as a merchant city. Many noteworthy Gothic buildings were erected, including the Vladislav Hall in the Hradčany.

In 1526 the Kingdom of Bohemia was handed over to the House of Habsburg. The fervent Catholicism of its members was to have grevious consequences in Bohemia, and then in Prague, where Protestant ideas instead had increasing popularity. These problems were not preeminent under Emperor Rudolf II, elected King of Bohemia in 1576, who chose Prague as his home. He lived in the Castle where he held his bizarre courts of astrologers, magicians and other strange figures. This was a prosperous period for the city: famous people living there in that age included the astronomers Tycho Brahe and Johann Kepler, the painter Arcimboldo and others.

In 1618 the famous Defenestration of Prague provoked the Thirty Years' War. Ferdinand II of Habsburg was deposed, and his place as King of Bohemia taken by Frederick V of Pfalz. But the Czech army was crushed in the Battle of the White Mountain (1620), not far from the city, and thenceforth Prague and Bohemia encountered a harsh period in which religious tolerance was abolished and the Catholic Counter-Reformation became dominant in every aspect of life. The city suffered also under Saxon (1631) and Swedish (1648) occupation. Moreover, after the Peace of Westphalia of the latter year, Ferdinand moved the court to Vienna, and Prague began a steady decline which reduced the population from the 60,000 it had had in the years before the war to 20,000.

In 1689 a great fire devastated Prague, but this spurred a renovation and a rebuilding of the city. The economic rise continued through the following century, and the city in 1771 had 80,000 inhabitants. Many of these were rich merchants who, together with noblemen of German, Spanish and even Italian origin, enriched the city with a host of palaces, churches and gardens, creating a Baroque style renowned throughout the world. In 1784, under Joseph II, the four municipalities of Malá Strana, Nové Město, Staré Město and Hradčany were merged into a single entity. The Jewish district, called Josefov, was included only in 1850. The Industrial Revolution had a strong effect in Prague, as factories could take advantage of the coalmines and ironworks of the nearby region. A first suburb, Karlín, was created in 1817, and twenty years later the population exceeded 100,000. The first railway connection was built in 1842.

The revolutions that shocked all Europe around 1848 touched Prague too, but they were fiercely suppressed. In the following years the Czech nationalist movement (opposed to another nationalist party, the German one) began its rise, until it gained the majority in the Town Council in 1861.

World War I ended with the defeat of Austria-Hungary and the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918. Prague was chosen as its capital. At this time Prague was a true European capital with a very developed industrial base. In 1930 the population had risen to a startling 850,000.

For most of its history Prague had been a multiethnic city with important Czech, German, and (a mostly Yiddish- and/or German-speaking) Jewish populations. From 1939, when the country was occupied by Nazi Germany, and during World War II, most Jews either fled the city or were killed in the Holocaust. The German population, which had formed the majority of the city's inhabitants until the 19th century, was expelled or fled in the aftermath of the war. Prague's people had revolted against the Nazi occupants as early as May 5, 1945, and four days later the Soviet army entered the city. Prague was thenceforth the capital of a Communist Republic under the military and political control of Soviet Union, and in 1955 it entered the Warsaw Pact.

The always lively intellectual world of Prague, however, suffered under the totalitarian regime, in spite of the rather careful program of rebuilding of and caring for the damaged monuments after World War II. At the 4th Czechoslovakian Writers' Congress held in the city in 1967 a strong position against the regime was taken. This spurred the new secretary of Communist Party, Alexander Dubček to proclaim a new deal in his city's and country's life, starting the short-lived season of the "socialism with a human face". It was the Prague Spring, which aimed at democratic reform of institutions. The Soviet Union and the rest of the Warsaw Pact reacted, occupying Czechoslovakia and the capital in August 1968, suppressing under tanks' tracks any attempt of renovation.

In 1989, after the Berlin Wall had fallen, and the Velvet Revolution crowded the streets of Prague, Czechoslovakia finally freed itself from communism and soviet influence, and Prague benefited deeply from the new mood. In 1993, after the split of Czechoslovakia, Prague became capital city of the new Czech Republic.

The four independent boroughs that had formerly constituted Prague were eventually proclaimed a single city in 1784. Those four cities were Hradčany (the Castle District, west and north of the Castle), Lesser Quarter (Malá Strana, south of the Castle), Old Town (Staré Město, on the east bank opposite the Castle) and New Town (Nové Město, further south and east). The city underwent further expansion with the annexation of Josefov in 1850 and Vyšehrad in 1883, and at the beginning of 1922, another 37 municipalities were incorporated, raising the city's population to 676,000. In 1938 population reached 1,000,000.