Old Town Bridge Tower
Gothic gate tower on a medieval bridge, once hung with severed heads as a warning to rebels.
Location
About this audio guide
The guide to the Old Town Bridge Tower in Prague opens with twelve human skulls sealed in iron cages on the tower's east face starting in 1621, after the Bohemian nobility's revolt against Habsburg rule collapsed at the Battle of White Mountain and twenty-seven of their leaders were beheaded in Old Town Square. It also traces the gothic gate itself, built generations earlier by Petr Parléř as a triumphal arch for royal coronations, and the damage Swedish troops later did to it. Stand on the eastern side, the one the cages faced.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Old Town Square
Historic plaza ringed by pastel facades, marked by twenty-seven crosses set into its cobblestones.
The Powder Tower
Gothic tower-gate begun as a royal coronation gift, left unfinished for centuries and later finished in soaring pseudo-Gothic style.
Charles Bridge
Gothic stone bridge lined with baroque saints, where a shining relief marks a martyr's fall into the river below.
Charles Bridge Museum
Former Crusaders hospital displaying models and original stonework from a medieval bridge.
Daliborka
Fifteenth-century prison tower with a haunting legend of a fiddling convict and hidden oubliette.
Church of Our Lady before Týn
Twin-spired Gothic church whose golden Madonna halo was forged from a melted-down Hussite chalice.