Charles Bridge

Old Town and Lesser Town in Prague

The need for building a new bridge appeared after the old Romanesque bridge called the Judith Bridge from 1172 was destroyed by a flood in spring 1342. The king Charles IV followed the advice of his astrologers and numerologists and waited 15 years for the new Gothic bridge to be founded. The foundation stone of the new bridge was laid on 9 July 1357 at 5:31 am, which can be enumerated as 135797531. This palindromic sequence of ascending and descending odd numbers is incised in the Old Town bridge tower. The construction of the bridge was supervised by Peter Parler, the builder of St Vitus’ Cathedral, and it was finished after his death at the beginning of the 15th century. The Charles Bridge suffered several floods during its existence and witnessed many tumultuous historic events. The devastating floods in the years 1432, 1784 and especially in 1890 damaged a few of the bridge’s pillars and the Gothic structure had to be reconstructed several times. The bridge was also severely damaged in 1648, when the Swedes occupied Prague and the Czech people tried to prevent them from crossing the Vltava river to the Old Town bank. During the fighting, the Old Town bridge tower was damaged and the remnants of its Gothic decoration had to be removed afterwards. The bridge is decorated with a gallery of 30 sculptures and sculptural groups. Most of them were created in high-Baroque style and were placed on the bridge in the course of the first half of the 18th century. They depict various Christian saints, who were venerated in the Czech Lands at that time. The most prominent Bohemian sculptors of the time took part on decorating the bridge, such as M. B. Braun, F. X. Brokof, M. V. Jäckel, and J. O. Mayer.