This article, with its superb illustrations, was originally published in a six volume set entitled Countries of the World, published by The Waverley Book Company Ltd of London (1924). PDb will endeavour to publish more of these articles. There is much information on those countries and cities of the world in post-WWI period. There are over four thousand photographs, of which about 1200 are given in full colour and in photogravure. We hope you enjoy them.

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THE general impression of Bohemia’s capital is that it deserves the epithet bestowed upon it by those that dwell therein – Zlatá Praha, “Golden Prague.” This ancient city stands as it were in a golden aura reflected from the wide sweeping curve of the river Vltava. Out of this golden haze rise towers and pinnacles, and dominating all is a vast mass of rock on which crowd tier upon tier of stately buildings, culminating in Prague’s crowning glory, the Cathedral of S. Vitus.

Prague lies right in the heart of Bohemia, which holds a central position in the continent of Europe. Though mountain barriers guard Bohemia on every side, yet are there highways, broad rivers, along which its capital has kept touch for centuries with the world outside; by these means Prague has been influenced both in its aspect and the life of its people, and has in its turn conferred benefits on others. This exchange accounts in great measure for the character of Prague, and nature, history and legend have all contributed richly towards its formation.

The Legend of the Doorway
Nature took the first steps by so ordering the rolling uplands through which the Vltava threads its way that several eminences rise up abruptly from the river’s bank and offered sites suitable for human habitation in those days when security was no matter of course. Of these heights the first in time as a dwelling place is Vyšehrad, a rocky promontory which overhangs the Vltava on its right bank. On this the earliest rulers of Bohemia, known to legend only, established themselves; a broken bit of masonry as solid as the rock of Vyšehrad itself tells of those early days of Bohemian nationhood.

From this eminence a legendary queen, Libuša, pointed out the bold promontory on the left bank of the river and a mile or so downstream as the crow flies – a mighty bluff half-encircled by the Vltava, rocky and tree-clad, with a deep cleft to north-west, where a brook forces its way to the river, and a broader ravine to eastward moving more gently down the tree-crowned ridge. “You will find in that forest,” she said, “a man fashioning a doorway; there will you build a city and it shall be called Praha”; the derivative is said to be from the Slavonic práh, a doorway. And so Prague came to be.

Centre of the Holy Roman Empire
While there yet lingers about Prague a faint air of those distant legendary days, there is a far stronger sense of the medieval. Seen under the silvery mists of a summer’s morning or in the golden glow of winter twilight, Prague with its towers and pinnacles outlined in snow is the ancient home of kings, of rulers of the Holy Roman Empire. The dawning light gradually reveals less ancient features of the city. There are the copper domes of churches decorated with the flamboyant extravagance of the seventeenth century, there are colleges and palaces ranging from the beauty of the Italian Renaissance, the plans brought here by wise rulers of long ago, to the flamboyant vulgarity of baroque and the impertinence of late nineteenth century German architecture.

The risen sun that shines full on rows of modem buildings lights up quaint little backwaters where you may find a Romanesque tenth century chapel half hidden among trees, overshadowed by a baroque monastic building now in use as a printing establishment; here and there a market-place surrounded by colonnades under gabled roofs, in the centre of the place an ancient well under a wrought-iron cage; an ancient temple, smoke-grimed, sunk below the level of a broad street, along which run the clanging electric cars between tall blocks of mansions the more modern of which show a tendency towards expressing genuine Slavonic art instead of copying from the neighbouring Germans as was once the custom.

There are gardens with glowing flower beds and shady trees and fountains; gardens on the sloping heights, a smother of fruit blossom in the spring, all glorious in gold and russet in the autumn, beautiful at all times, even when winter transforms the naked branches into a fairy network of silver lace; gardens about the churches and in various expected and unexpected places, where children have playgrounds laid out for them especially, where workers rest at midday or recreate themselves after the day’s toil is over.

And among all these glories, monuments of the past and stately expressions of the present, and amid the unfailing beauties of nature, the people of Prague contentedly go about their lawful occasions. Their chief trouble, if they have any others, is the housing question, for Prague as a consequence of the Great War, has risen from the status of a provincial town to that of capital of an independent state, and has almost doubled its population in consequence.

The day’s work begins early in Prague, not only for those who deal in country produce and are up betimes in the morning to meet the great wains that rumble over the stone pavement; this is pretty much the same in all great cities. But in Prague it seems that all business, even that of government offices, begins at least an hour, if not two hours, earlier than that to which English people are accustomed.

The work ends later in the evening, too, but against that there is a solid hour or two in the middle of the day during which no business whatever is done. It is the dinner-hour; shops are closed, offices, both government and private, are deserted, even the churches are locked up; and those entrusted with charge of the latter seem to require more sustenance, or take longer in absorbing it, than do any others. Therefore the traveller should not attempt to go sight-seeing between 12.30 and 2.30 p.m.

Prague is a very busy place, has a number of important factories, locomotive works and printing establishments, and in addition to this now collects and deals with the produce of the whole of Bohemia and those other provinces of the former Austro-Hungarian monarchy-Moravia, part of Silesia and Slovakia, all united into one free and independent republic. Then there is considerable life on the river, tugs hauling heavy barges, timber rafts floating down from the wooded slopes of the Bohemian forest, and a fleet of pleasure steamers, gaily painted in the national colours, red and white. It is hard to determine whether angling should be considered as business or pleasure. There are many anglers, and their aspect and the results of their pastime suggest that their pursuit is neither business nor pleasure, but penance, especially when they sit shivering on a strip of carpet by the side of a hole in the ice.

PRAGUE: THE OLD TOWN-HALL FACING THE OLD TOWN SQUARE: Occupying one side of the Old Town Square is the Rathaus or town-hall which was built on the site of an older structure now represented by the great clock tower dating from 1474 and the chapel on the left. Above the balcony on the second floor are four statues of famous rulers of Prague. Opposite the town-hall “is the old Hussite Tyn Church, begun In 1370.

Business over, the city of Prague offers pleasure in many forms. For the serious-minded there are museums, chief of which is the National Museum standing at the highest end of a broad avenue, the Václavské Námesti, the show street of the city, round about which are gathered the principal hotels, restaurants and shops. There are two opera houses, one for those who prefer the language of the country, Czech, the other for those who would rather hear grand opera in German. Then, tucked away among old palaces with tiled roofs and stately porticoes, with here and there some lovely Gothic projection, is a quaint old theatre, the Mozarteum. A stone balustrade runs round its sides at the first storey, and from this balcony you may look out over the flower market on one hand and the fruit market on the other, over groups of large umbrellas that shade great masses of the most glorious colour.