Follow the Yellow Umbrella

Yesterday afternoon I did a fantastic walking tour of Prague. I spent 2 and half hours following a yellow umbrella through the swarms of tourists. The tour was funny, serious, witty and super informative. The guide was amazing! And it was absolutely FREE. I highly recommend the tour to anyone who is visiting Prague for the first time. It's a crash-course in Prague's history and you'll figure out which places you'll want to go back to in your own time. 

Here are some pictures from the tour:

At first glance you may think that these two towers are exactly the same, but look again! You will see that the one on the right is bigger. This was one of those "whoopsie moments" in history. The church decided to cover it up, by justifying the architectural slip-up. To make the mistake relevant to both man and the Church, they said the tower on the right, the bigger and stronger of the two, was a symbol of Adam and the smaller, weaker tower on the left was a symbol of Eve... And that's what you call 15th century PR!

Do you like the look of this building above? Well, so did Hitler. Hitler loved Prague and had big plans for the city. This building, the Rudolfinum, was the seat of the Nazi Philharmonic Orchestra. If you look carefully you can see statues on the roof. Those are statues of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and other great musicians. There is also a statue of Felix Mendelssohn, a Jew. Legend has it that  Hitler's right-hand man, the Butcher of Prague, ordered the statue of Mendelssohn to be removed. His men went up to the roof, realised they didn't know which one Mendelssohn was and rather than admit defeat to their boss (Who would? He was called the Butcher of Prague!), they devised a way to find the statue of Mendelssohn. Their plan? Measure the noses of each statue. When they found the one with the biggest nose, they brought the statue down and smashed it into the cobblestones. Unfortunately, they were all prosecuted, because the statue that they destroyed was of Wagner, a German and an anti-Semitic, who just happened to have the largest nose.

Statues of famous musicians on the roof of the Rudolfinum.

 

Prague's Astronomical Clock (Above) - There's an amazing story behind this clock, which includes people being thrown out of windows and the gauging out of eyes, but you'll have to come to Prague to hear it. The four figures next to the clock represent sins; vanity (the first man's holding a mirror), greed (this man's holding a bag of money), death (no man, just a skeleton) and the Turk (a threat to the Church with his turban and musical instrument). Every day, on the hour, the four figures move and the 12 apostles come out of the two windows above the clock, as a reminder that people were only alive because of this clock and that there would be another hour to confess their sins before judgement day... or something like that. 

Here's a link to the Discover Prague Tours' website: www.discover-prague.com 

I did the Royal Walk Free Tour, but they also offer a Prague Pub Crawl, Prague Castle Tour and even a Concentration Camp Tour of Terezin.