Our second day in Prague is devoted to investigating one of its top attractions — and we do mean top, as it’s situated way up on a hill. It’s Prague Castle, part of which has been standing since the 8th Century. But it’s an enormous complex comprising several prominent buildings, structures and points of interest, including the Old Royal Palace. It’s a city on a hill, a city within a city. And today we were getting our first taste of it.

After a tram ride and then a bus ride, we’re up near the peak, with a commanding view of the city that incorporates both its classic architecture with reddish rooftops and its futuristic designs that look as if they belong in the intergalactic federation. Then a short walk along some cobblestone streets, and we find ourselves in front of the palace gates — with nary a moat in sight.

The show starts before we even get inside, with the Changing Of The Guard, which takes place daily at noon. Well actually, the guard is changed every hour, but most of the time it’s just a simple matter of one pair of sentries replacing another, and hardly anyone bats a shutter. But at noon, they make a grand spectacle of it, and we’re there just in time to catch it.

When we arrive, a crowd has gathered outside the gate, sharpening and oiling their cameras. The two “old” sentries, who actually appear to be quite young, are still on duty and, even though they’ve been at it for nearly an hour, they still stand as ramrod stiff as the rifles and bayonets they cradle in their white-gloved hands. Well, except maybe for the occasional little twitch that you don’t detect unless you watch closely for a long time. Nearby, several older soldiers, clad in fatigues, are standing guard for the guards (though not at attention), keeping an eye on the crowd, and probably monitoring whether the sentries need anything — such as an emergency trip to the WC.

As the witching hour approaches, the soldiers in fatigues part the sea of onlookers to make way for a procession of other soldiers who are, like the sentries, decked out in their crisp dress blues. These soldiers march through the gate to a courtyard for the ceremony — which we, alas, are unable to see very well. But there is a band playing, and a considerable amount of hoopla. It appears that in order to get a ringside seat to the event, you have to be inside the paid area of the courtyard, which we are not yet. And it’s clear that we’ll need to return on another day and position ourselves on some favorable real estate at an early enough time. (And as it happens, the tickets to the Castle complex are valid for two consecutive days, and we didn’t expect to see everything today anyway.)

Once the invisible (to us) ceremony is over, three young soldiers march out the gate in their very stylized mode of military locomotion. Two of these will be the reinforcements for the sentry gate. Each one marches over to the one he is replacing, does a ritual salute with the rifle, banging it on the ground and then lifting it up to “present arms” position. Then the old guard steps aside, and the new guard steps behind him into the little kiosk to don sunglasses with his back turned. Then the new guard assumes his position and the old guard marches away to go somewhere and shake out the kinks.

Then we buy our tickets and head inside the courtyard, trying to decide what to see first. We settle upon St. Vitus Cathedral, which is billed as the largest and most important church in the whole country, containing the tombs of many Holy Roman Emperors and Bohemian kings.. It’s also possibly the oldest, especially if you define “church” as a specific location for worship as opposed to a specific building.

The first St. Vitus church on this spot was built around the year 930, and a second one replaced it about a century later. Construction on the third and current building commenced in 1344 and was mostly finished within a few decades. But it wasn’t really finished finished until… would you believe… 1929.

The cathedral is a superb specimen of Gothic architecture with dimensions of 407 feet by 197 feet and a main tower that reaches 337 feet high.

But the inside isn’t quite as impressive as the outside. Which might be in part because the inside is undergoing some heavy renovation, with lots of scaffolding cluttering up the view of the exquisite sculpture, relief carvings, relics and stained glass. In one section, there is even a layer of dust on the pews. And a couple of sets of butt prints in the dust.

Then in it’s on to Golden Lane, which is a short and narrow street that has been that reminds you of something out of some Disney movie or other. Or perhaps Diagon Alley. It’s lined with a colorful row of little cottages that originally were built in the 15th Century as lodging for palace guards. Then in the 18th Century they became the home for craftsmen, particularly goldsmiths — and thus the name.

Its other residents included author Franz Kafka, whose former home in apartment number 22 is kept in some museum semblance of its appearance at the time he lived there and penned his story A Country Doctor (which Dennis recalls reading in college lit).

During World War II, one apartment was occupied by a fortune teller whom the Nazis arrested and tortured to death. And her crime? Predicting that the Nazis would be defeated.

These days, the tiny dwellings are mostly home to various gift shops. One larger upstairs area, however, houses a museum of weapons and armor. The collection of medieval armor is quite extensive, displaying an astonishing variety of expressive styles. But the pieces are obviously replicas, because they are in a condition much too fine to have been around so many centuries. In fact, in the rear of the hall is a little chamber where we see a metalworker doing some buffing of one suit of armor, in a manner much too casual to be working on an actual antique.

The last stop on today’s circuit is Daliborka Tower, which was built in the 15th Century and ultimately used as a prison. Its name comes from one of its earliest prisoners who, according to legend, learned to play the violin during his confinement, and became such a virtuoso that the guards and others would gather around his cell to hear him.

At least prisoners in this tower had it better than most prisoners of the time did. There was a window, and even a source of heat in cold weather. But if the prisoner was really bad, or really detested for whatever reason, he might be shunted down to the dungeon and left to die.

We tour the dungeon part too, and it’s all decked out with various instruments of torture. Some of which actually may have been used, though not at this location. Daliborka itself was not a den of torture. Furthermore, some of the specific torture gadgets should be viewed with a healthy grain of salt, as they actually may not have existed at all. While torture was certainly a feature of the Middle Ages (as in any age), torturers tended to just use whatever tools they had rather than invent elaborate mechanisms for the purpose.

A good example is the infamous Iron Maiden, one of which is on display here. According to legend and rumor, Miss Iron was ubiquitous in the Medieval era. But in fact, this was a myth concocted centuries later (like the “chastity belt”) for pure sensationalism, and to promote the narrative of the “Dark Ages”. All of the supposed specimens of these devices were actually built in fairly modern times.

Well, there’s still more to see in the expansive Prague Castle compound, but we’ve put in a pretty full day of it being tourists, and our ticket will still be good tomorrow. So we start making our way down the hill — walking this time, which is much easier when you’re going down.

We end up at one of the most popular promenades in the city, the Smetana Embankment — named after the famed Czech composer Bedrich Smetana (who coincidentally composed an opera based on the legend of the prisoner violinist). It’s a picturesque little grassy pedestrian thoroughfare lined with red-roofed apartment houses and adorned with weeping willows.

From here you can get a good view of the Prague Castle, the Charles Bridge, and other prominent sights. And you can also get a tram going to pretty much anywhere in the city –which in our case means back to our apartment.

Events occurred 4/2/2025