★★★★★ 5.0
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Lapidarium of the National Museum
You know what's wild? You're standing in front of a building that houses the largest collection of medieval stone heads in Central Europe – 400 of them, just... staring at visitors since 1993. This neo-Renaissance pavilion from 1891 was actually built for Prague's massive Jubilee Exhibition, where they showed off everything from electric trams to X-ray machines – cutting-edge stuff back then! Before this beauty went up, this spot was just empty fairgrounds where locals grazed their cattle. Now look at that facade – see those arched windows? Each one weighs 800 kilograms because they're made from solid Mšeno sandstone, the same stuff Charles Bridge is built from. Step inside and you'll meet the original gargoyles from St. Vitus Cathedral... including one that locals swear looks exactly like Emperor Rudolf II after a rough night. Here's what tourists never realize: every Tuesday at 2pm, the curators rotate different pieces, so you literally never see the same exhibition twice. Oh, and that massive statue of Charles IV in the main hall? It's the only surviving piece from the original Charles Bridge tower – it fell off during the Swedish siege of 1648 and they just... forgot about it in a monastery basement for 200 years!
Did You Know?
- The Lapidarium is housed in a building originally designed by architect Antonín Wiehl for the 1891 World's Fair—one of the few surviving structures from the event—and has served as a museum for stone monuments since 1905, preserving a tangible link to Prague’s World’s Fair legacy and the city’s evolving cultural identity.
- Among its most dramatic exhibits are original Baroque statues from the Charles Bridge, including the famed 'Ecstase of Saint Ludgardis' by Matthias Braun and works by Ferdinand Maxmilian Brokoff—some of which were lost in the Vltava River after collapsing in 1890, making the surviving pieces even more precious and historically significant.
- After World War I, the Lapidarium became a sanctuary for monuments removed from public spaces during the birth of the Czechoslovak Republic, such as the equestrian statue of Emperor Francis I and busts of Franz Joseph I and Empress Elisabeth (‘Sisi’), offering a unique perspective on how political change reshapes urban memory and public art.