Libuše's Bath & the Ramparts: Where Prague Was Prophesied
Why is it significant?
Walk to the edge of the ramparts and look over. Far below, the Vltava bends past the rock, trains rattle into the tunnel, and in the distance, on its own hill, sits Prague Castle. Right at your feet, clinging to the cliff, are the ruined walls of a small Gothic tower. Its name is Libuše's Bath.
Key Facts
| Place | Libuše's Bath & the Ramparts: Where Prague Was Prophesied |
|---|---|
| Address | Štulcova, 128 00 Praha 2, Czechia |
| Geo Coordinates | 50.06340, 14.41610 |
| Part of Walk | Vyšehrad: Princess Libuše, Cubist Houses and the Nation's Cemetery in Prague |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk to the edge of the ramparts and look over. Far below, the Vltava bends past the rock, trains rattle into the tunnel, and in the distance, on its own hill, sits Prague Castle. Right at your feet, clinging to the cliff, are the ruined walls of a small Gothic tower. Its name is Libuše's Bath.
The legend begins with a princess. Libuše, wise and able to see the future, ruled the Czechs from a castle on this hill. When her men grumbled at being governed by a woman, she sent her white horse into the countryside to find her a husband, and it stopped before a ploughman named Přemysl, working his field. He became her husband and the founder of the Přemyslid dynasty, which ruled Bohemia for four centuries.
And one day, standing on a cliff over the Vltava, Libuše fell into a trance and spoke her most famous prophecy: I see a great city, whose glory will touch the stars. She told her people to go into the forest and build a castle where they found a man making the threshold of a house. Threshold in Czech is práh... and so, the story goes, Prague was named.
Folk tradition added a darker detail. They said the princess took lovers and bathed with them here, and that the men who displeased her went down through a trapdoor into the river. A wonderful story, and almost certainly nonsense. The tower was built centuries after any Libuše could have lived, as part of the fortifications. Archaeologists add, politely, that the hill fort itself dates from the tenth century, which makes it younger than Prague Castle across the river.
But behind you, in the park, stand the heroes you met in name at the very start: Libuše and Přemysl, Ctirad and Šárka, Záboj and Slavoj, Lumír and Song, carried up here from Palacký Bridge after the war, still posing grandly for a nation that loves them whether or not they existed. So stay a while on the wall, with the river below and the Castle on the horizon. This is where Prague's story begins... and, for today, where your walk ends.