Old Town Square

In the year 1621, twenty-seven Protestant nobles had their heads displayed on iron spikes right where you're standing... for ten long years. Look around this ancient square that's witnessed a thousand years of human drama since its birth in the 10th century, and you'll notice something peculiar – every single building faces slightly inward, creating an amphitheater of stone where executions, coronations, and love stories have played out like scenes on history's grandest stage. That Gothic spire piercing the sky to your left? The Church of Our Lady before Týn contains the tomb of astronomer Tycho Brahe, who died in 1601 after his bladder burst because he refused to leave a royal banquet – etiquette literally killed him. And see those 27 white crosses embedded in the cobblestones near the Old Town Hall? Each marks where a nobleman's head rolled after the failed Bohemian Revolt, their blood seeping between these very stones you walk upon. But here's the SECRET most visitors miss... beneath your feet lies a network of medieval cellars, three stories deep, where merchants once hid their gold and lovers met in darkness. During the plague of 1680, these underground chambers became makeshift morgues, holding over 15,000 bodies. Today, as tourists snap photos above, few realize they're standing atop Central Europe's largest medieval necropolis, where the whispers of ten centuries still echo in the shadows below.