Hradčanské náměstí

This guide to Hradčanské náměstí in Prague follows the gilded plague column before the castle gate back to 1713, when bubonic plague killed roughly a third of the city's population, and the thanksgiving monument the survivors raised once the sickness burned out. It follows sculptor Ferdinand Maximilian Brokoff's work carving Bohemia's plague saints one by one, and what happened to the column after his death in 1731. Look closely at the row of saints as you cross the square.