Old Town Square

This guide to Old Town Square in Prague uncovers what the twenty-seven white crosses set into the cobblestones mark: a single morning, June 21, 1621, when a crowd packed the square before dawn to watch an executioner named Jan Mydlar climb a scaffold he had built for the occasion. It follows the men waiting to die, among them a philosopher and university rector, and the English witness who later described what he saw. Look down at the crosses underfoot before you look up at the cheerful facades around them.