Euro04: Berlin + Prague

Hus Monument and Palac Kinskych

Friday, March 12th, 11:11AM

Cake-like.


Turning about ninety-degrees to the right of sv Mikulas, I got a shot of the Hus Monument and the Palac Kinskych at the north end of the Old Town Square.

Jan Hus was a respected preacher that the Vatican had burned at the stake in 1415 for challenging their sale of indulgences to fund the papel wars (amongst other things). This set off a shit-storm in Bohemia that eventually lead to the Hussites breaking from the Catholic Church. And so for the past six hundred years Bohemian history has experienced many tippings of the scales of power between Hussites and Catholics. The Vatican overturned his sentence in 1965 and sent the Hussites a fruit basket in apology. (I may have made up the fruit basket part.)

Hus also invented the hachek (hacek) symbol -- the "v" over many Czech letters -- that so confounds my web browser.

Anyway, so here's his monument. Hus' death day is a national holiday around here.

(Don't use this info in any history reports, please. I'm reconstructing it mostly from memory and the few brief sentences in my guidebook.)