Our last day in Prague was a busy one and started when we woke up at 9 am. After having breakfast at our hotel and getting ready, we set out for a comprehensive tour of the Jewish quarter Josefov which is a 2 minute walk from our hotel.
We bought the Jewish Museum ticket which covered 7 different sites in the Jewish quarter, all within walking distance of each other. The first one was the Maisal Synagogue which has been converted into a museum now. It chronicles the history of Jews in the Bohemia region and the discrimination that they had to face throughout the rule of different regimes for hundreds of years. Christian rulers forbade the Jews from working in any other trade so money lending was left as the only viable option since Christians weren't allowed to do that because of religious reasons. Jews became really good at it after generations in the trade but still had to pay additional and special taxes. However, this systematic discrimination pales in comparison to the extermination philosophy of the Nazi regime during the holocaust. The synagogue exhibits various artifacts as old as 700 years old that were used by the Jews of Prague.
Our next stop was the Pinkas Synagogue. This synagogue now serves as a memorial to the 80,000 Jews of Prague who were murdered by the Nazis during the holocaust. The walls of both floors of the synagogue have the names of all 80,000 of the innocent victims written on them along with the date of birth and date of death. One wall has the names of all the Nazi concentration camps written on it. A soundtrack plays in the background where the singers say the names of the victims. The synagogue tries to humanize the magnitude of this atrocity and gives visitors a true appreciation of the sheer number of people killed. In this context, imagining that over 6 million Jews were murdered during the holocaust is just astounding. The global population of Jews was reduced from 17 million to 11 million in one of the worst crimes in human history. On the first floor of the Pinkas Synagogue is a heart breaking exhibition of drawings made by children who were exterminated at the Terezin concentration camp on the outskirts of Prague. The children were taught how to draw at the camp by one woman and their depictions of the daily life at the camp, transport in and out of the camp, dreams of getting out and visiting Palestine one day, the life before getting to the camp and just drawings of the world around us are a cruel reminder that the Nazis didn't even spare innocent children in their genocide.
The next stop was the Old Jewish Cemetery next to the Pinkas Synagogue. We saw this from the outside during our walking tour a couple of days back but this time we got a chance to walk around the graves. There are about 10 or 11 layers of buried people here with the number of buried closing in on almost a 100,000. Since the Jews of Prague were confined to living in the Josefov quarter for hundreds of years, they didn't have enough space to bury their dead so they buried them on top of each other. The cemetery is yet another evidence of the haunting injustice bore by the Jewish community over the centuries.
The next stop was the Klausen Synagogue. It chronicles Jewish customs and religious rituals including the Jewish calendar, the Saturday Sabbath, the daily prayers and their timings, holidays such as the Yom Kippur, Hanukkah and Passover and religious clothing.
Our next stop was the Ceremonial Hall which chronicles Jewish customs and rituals related to sickness and death. Then we took a break to have lunch at a restaurant that was a few blocks away and had been recommended by our walking tour guide on our first day in Prague. We tried the beef steak in creamy sauce and the chicken steak and both of them were really flavorful. We tried the honey cake for dessert and it turned out to be good too. The restaurant looked like a tavern and is on the old ground floor level before the city was raised so essentially we sat in an establishment with 700 years old floor and walls!
We resumed our tour at the Old-New synagogue. We had seen it as part of our walking tour on the first day too. It's the one whose windows are now at eye level after the city ground level was increased to prevent from flooding. It's the oldest synagogue of Prague out of all the ones that we saw. It's an active synagogue and the Jewish community of Prague still uses it as a center of worship. The synagogue was completed in 1270 and you feel that weight of history when you enter the premises.
Our last stop was the Spanish synagogue which has a monument honoring Franz Kafka outside it. It's quite ironic, given Kafka's disdain for religion for most of his life. The synagogue is extremely ornate and elaborate inside and uses the Moorish style of decoration.
We walked back to our hotel and freshened up. After a little while, we ventured out again and this time we didn't have a touristy checklist to go through but instead wanted to enjoy the medieval romantic atmosphere of this unique city. We had coffee at the cubist cafe in the House of Black Madonna. This house features the cubist architecture style which emphasized symmetry of form using only functional elements. The house is on the Royal Route which was the path taken by Czech monarchs upon coronation. The path starts from the powder gate which was the main gate to the old town, passes through the old town square and a cobblestone street all the way to the river, crosses the Charles Bridge to enter the Lesser Town (Mala Strana) and ends at the Prague Castle. We walked part of the Royal Route from the House of Madonna to the Charles Bridge (where we saw several street musicians performing) and then onwards to Mala Strana and then the Castle Town. We didn't go all the way to the Castle since we had seen it in the previous day's walking tour so we turned back when it started getting too hilly. Charles Bridge is the symbol of Prague and it's not an ordinary bridge. It has 30 statues lining it on both sides and is a stone bridge with cobblestone walking path and is the length of 7 football fields. It's flanked on both ends by medieval gates. For 400 years, this was the only bridge that connected the old town with the new/lesser town and its importance as a cultural and historical icon still remains the same.
By the time we got back to our hotel, our feet were hurting because of all the walking in the past week so we decided to get a massage. We got a one hour Thai couples massage which seemed like it will be effective but we will only know after waking up after a night's sleep. We walked to the Italian restaurant where we had planned to have dinner but their kitchen had closed by the time we reached there a little after 11 pm. There weren't many options for dinner available at that time so we had a very late dinner at KFC and had chicken zinger sandwiches. After coming back to our hotel, we packed our suitcases for checking out next morning to catch our train to Vienna. Till the next update, take care and goodbye!
We bought the Jewish Museum ticket which covered 7 different sites in the Jewish quarter, all within walking distance of each other. The first one was the Maisal Synagogue which has been converted into a museum now. It chronicles the history of Jews in the Bohemia region and the discrimination that they had to face throughout the rule of different regimes for hundreds of years. Christian rulers forbade the Jews from working in any other trade so money lending was left as the only viable option since Christians weren't allowed to do that because of religious reasons. Jews became really good at it after generations in the trade but still had to pay additional and special taxes. However, this systematic discrimination pales in comparison to the extermination philosophy of the Nazi regime during the holocaust. The synagogue exhibits various artifacts as old as 700 years old that were used by the Jews of Prague.
Our next stop was the Pinkas Synagogue. This synagogue now serves as a memorial to the 80,000 Jews of Prague who were murdered by the Nazis during the holocaust. The walls of both floors of the synagogue have the names of all 80,000 of the innocent victims written on them along with the date of birth and date of death. One wall has the names of all the Nazi concentration camps written on it. A soundtrack plays in the background where the singers say the names of the victims. The synagogue tries to humanize the magnitude of this atrocity and gives visitors a true appreciation of the sheer number of people killed. In this context, imagining that over 6 million Jews were murdered during the holocaust is just astounding. The global population of Jews was reduced from 17 million to 11 million in one of the worst crimes in human history. On the first floor of the Pinkas Synagogue is a heart breaking exhibition of drawings made by children who were exterminated at the Terezin concentration camp on the outskirts of Prague. The children were taught how to draw at the camp by one woman and their depictions of the daily life at the camp, transport in and out of the camp, dreams of getting out and visiting Palestine one day, the life before getting to the camp and just drawings of the world around us are a cruel reminder that the Nazis didn't even spare innocent children in their genocide.
The next stop was the Old Jewish Cemetery next to the Pinkas Synagogue. We saw this from the outside during our walking tour a couple of days back but this time we got a chance to walk around the graves. There are about 10 or 11 layers of buried people here with the number of buried closing in on almost a 100,000. Since the Jews of Prague were confined to living in the Josefov quarter for hundreds of years, they didn't have enough space to bury their dead so they buried them on top of each other. The cemetery is yet another evidence of the haunting injustice bore by the Jewish community over the centuries.
The next stop was the Klausen Synagogue. It chronicles Jewish customs and religious rituals including the Jewish calendar, the Saturday Sabbath, the daily prayers and their timings, holidays such as the Yom Kippur, Hanukkah and Passover and religious clothing.
Our next stop was the Ceremonial Hall which chronicles Jewish customs and rituals related to sickness and death. Then we took a break to have lunch at a restaurant that was a few blocks away and had been recommended by our walking tour guide on our first day in Prague. We tried the beef steak in creamy sauce and the chicken steak and both of them were really flavorful. We tried the honey cake for dessert and it turned out to be good too. The restaurant looked like a tavern and is on the old ground floor level before the city was raised so essentially we sat in an establishment with 700 years old floor and walls!
We resumed our tour at the Old-New synagogue. We had seen it as part of our walking tour on the first day too. It's the one whose windows are now at eye level after the city ground level was increased to prevent from flooding. It's the oldest synagogue of Prague out of all the ones that we saw. It's an active synagogue and the Jewish community of Prague still uses it as a center of worship. The synagogue was completed in 1270 and you feel that weight of history when you enter the premises.
Our last stop was the Spanish synagogue which has a monument honoring Franz Kafka outside it. It's quite ironic, given Kafka's disdain for religion for most of his life. The synagogue is extremely ornate and elaborate inside and uses the Moorish style of decoration.
We walked back to our hotel and freshened up. After a little while, we ventured out again and this time we didn't have a touristy checklist to go through but instead wanted to enjoy the medieval romantic atmosphere of this unique city. We had coffee at the cubist cafe in the House of Black Madonna. This house features the cubist architecture style which emphasized symmetry of form using only functional elements. The house is on the Royal Route which was the path taken by Czech monarchs upon coronation. The path starts from the powder gate which was the main gate to the old town, passes through the old town square and a cobblestone street all the way to the river, crosses the Charles Bridge to enter the Lesser Town (Mala Strana) and ends at the Prague Castle. We walked part of the Royal Route from the House of Madonna to the Charles Bridge (where we saw several street musicians performing) and then onwards to Mala Strana and then the Castle Town. We didn't go all the way to the Castle since we had seen it in the previous day's walking tour so we turned back when it started getting too hilly. Charles Bridge is the symbol of Prague and it's not an ordinary bridge. It has 30 statues lining it on both sides and is a stone bridge with cobblestone walking path and is the length of 7 football fields. It's flanked on both ends by medieval gates. For 400 years, this was the only bridge that connected the old town with the new/lesser town and its importance as a cultural and historical icon still remains the same.
By the time we got back to our hotel, our feet were hurting because of all the walking in the past week so we decided to get a massage. We got a one hour Thai couples massage which seemed like it will be effective but we will only know after waking up after a night's sleep. We walked to the Italian restaurant where we had planned to have dinner but their kitchen had closed by the time we reached there a little after 11 pm. There weren't many options for dinner available at that time so we had a very late dinner at KFC and had chicken zinger sandwiches. After coming back to our hotel, we packed our suitcases for checking out next morning to catch our train to Vienna. Till the next update, take care and goodbye!
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