Praha ve fotografii/Prague en images/Prague in Pictures [antikvár]

ARCHITECTURAL PRAGUE BY ZDENÉK WIRTH JFew of the cities of Europe have been endowed with as fine a site as Prague. The soil 011 which the historic city stands is hilly, changes at every turn; and the large natural outlines it has bestowed upon the town are the basis of its monumentality. The several hills which rise transversely above the river Vltava provide a scaffolding which the river's broad ribbon knits together. The stream is transformed into a laké within the city, which mirrors the dominating architectural features: the Little Quarter (Malá Strana) and Castle Hill (Hradcany). Upon this site the development of a thousand years has produced an architectural achievement of great sculptural force, unique in dramatic outline and charming in detail; a complex architectural synthesis in which history and art meet harmoniously and which has accorded a place to all trends of European town construction from the ioth to the 20th centuries. To this day, the ground-plan of Prague as well as the siting of the architectural highlights hold the drama of the city's evolution. The story is on a vast scale and of a high order of artistic achievement. At first only a huddle of scattered medieval settlements, Prague has been fused in the course of the centuries into a large úrban unit; in the making of this variegated architectural pattern all the styles of our age have played their part. The gradual assumption of definite architectural outline starts with the city's entry into history in the ioth century. The basic components of the úrban organism were the two focal points, the Princes' Castles of Hradcany and Vysehrad, and the "suburbs" nestling beneath them on both banks of the river, the markét centre at Tyn, and the foreign traders' colonies. The first monumental structures, contrasting with the artistically insignificant architecture of the common population at the various settlements, were the stone edifices of castles and churches, Judith Bridge, and the steepled and spired domestic buildings of the patrician burghers. This Romanesque úrban nucleus still conformed to the pnmitive, tangled street pattern, with few and sparsely built-up areas. A compact úrban pattern did not emerge until the first half of the 13th century, with the growth of the Old Town (Staré Mésto), as the result of proper enclosure