"The history of astronomy is a history of receding horizons" - Edwin Powell Hubble





We spent last Thursday through Sunday in Prague. The place just seeps with culture, with its huge castle and expansive old town area that can keep you occupied for days on end. The old town hall is the site of an astronomical clock built in 1410, over a century before Copernicus even established that it was the Earth that orbits the Sun and not the other way around. Still, the medieval theory was enough to design a clock that would tell the hour, the position of the sun relative to the horizons (dawn and dusk), the position of the sun relative to the tropics (to tell the season), the phase of the moon, and tons of other information.



The city itself is a typical lively European hub. Filled as much with churches, cobblestones, and squares as with boisterous pubs and excited tourists. We took in not only all the sights, but also the sounds. Each evening, the city is flooded with classical music recitals in its wide variety of world-class concert halls. We caught a performance of the Prague Royal Orchestra, playing selected favourites spanning the baroque to the romantic, with the local hero Dvorak worked into the repertoire as well.

One of the main sights in the city is the huge castle, the world's largest ancient castle. It was first built over 1100 years ago, though it grew and changed as the centuries passed. Being so enormous, we managed to fill a whole day visiting it. Its central jewel is the St. Vitus Cathedral, one of Europe's beautiful examples of high-vaulted Gothic architecture.



As with any gothic church, one of the main highlights is the stained glass. The window by Alphonse Mucha was our favourite in the castle, and probably one of my favourites from all of Europe. Still, it gets beat by Sainte Chapelle in Paris, and by the works of Stanislaw Wyspianski in Krakow.

I think my favourite part of the castle, though, was a history exhibit they have spanning the development of the site from prehistory to modern times. Rooms in the exhibit are dedicated to major eras in the castle's history, and each is furnished with a large model that really helps you visualize how the building grew to its present state. When they started building it, an astronomical clock would be beyond the means of anyone on Earth. By the time they had finished, it was already a curiosity from ancient times.