Karlův most (Praha 1) Bridge

Charles Bridge is the oldest standing bridge across the Vltava River in Prague and the second oldest preserved bridge in the Czech Republic. It connects the Old Town with the Lesser Town and the historic royal route passes over it.

It replaced the older Judith Bridge, which was carried away by ice in the year 1342 during the spring thaw. Construction of the new bridge began in 1357 under the patronage of King Charles the Fourth and was completed in 1402. Thanks in part to it, Prague became an important stop on European trade routes. For a long time it was called only the stone bridge or Prague bridge. The name Charles Bridge became established only around 1870. A Prague publisher and engraver named Joseph Rudl was the first to use it in his book about the bridge and its statues.

The bridge measures over 515 meters and is roughly nine and a half meters wide. The roadway lies 13 meters above the normal water level of the river. It is supported by sixteen arches. The bridge is not completely straight. It is bent three times and slightly convex against the current. The foundations are made of stones cut into the shape of millstones, probably supported by rafts of oak piles. Wooden ice breakers protect the bridge against the current on the upstream side.

On the Lesser Town side stand the larger and smaller Lesser Town Bridge Towers, on the Old Town side the Old Town Bridge Tower. However, this tower does not stand on the corner pier as is customary with bridge towers, but rather on the first inner pillar. The Old Town pier is now built into the cellars of one of the houses.

The sculptural decoration was originally concentrated mainly on the towers. In the place of today's Crucifixion group, there was already a cross during the reign of Charles the Fourth. Around the year 1500, the bridge also had a shrine of God and a statue of Bruncvik, which marked the area of Old Town law.

From the late seventeenth century, thirty mainly Baroque statues and groups were added to the bridge. The first was the statue of Saint John of Nepomuk, commemorating his throwing from the bridge. It became a model for most later depictions of this saint. Most of the other statues were installed between 1707 and 1714. Among the most valuable are Saint Luitgard by Matthias Bernard Braun and a series of works by Ferdinand Maximilian Brokoff.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, some of the Baroque statues were replaced by Classicist works by Joseph and Emanuel Max. After the flood in 1890 and due to aging sandstone, copies have been gradually installed on the bridge since the beginning of the twentieth century. The originals are stored mainly in the Lapidary at the Prague Exhibition Grounds and in the Gorlice Hall at Vyšehrad.