First on the agenda today was watching the Astronomical Clock in the Old Town Square strike 9:00am, while the 12 apostles did their ritualistic circular dance, and the figure of Death tolled the bells and let the sand in the hourglass of life sift through.
Then we stopped by the most famous pilgrimage site in Prague, the Loreto Church, a 17th-century Baroque replica of the Santa Casa in Loreto, Italy. The original Santa Casa is believed to have been the birth place of the Virgin Mary, and where she received the Annunciation and the Incarnation.
The next item on the agenda was the Prague Castle. After watching the changing of the guard at the main entrance gate, we took a self-guided tour of the castle, which originally dated from the 9th-century, but was almost completely rebuilt in the 16th-century. It was once the capital of the Holy Roman Empire, and is still the seat of government in the Czech Republic. The crowning feature of the castle complex is the Gothic St. Vitus’s Cathedral. Prince Wenceslas first had the rotunda of the cathedral built around 925, but the whole project was only just completed in 1929.
Climbing up the 287 tight, circular, winding steps, with about a kazillion other clambering tourists, Dave made his way to the top of the cathedral’s South Tower, where he took this photograph.
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