St Wenceslas Statue & the Jan Palach and Jan Zajíc Memorial
Why is it significant?
Look down first. Set into the pavement below the museum steps is a bronze cross, and the ground around it seems to swell and buckle, as if the stones themselves had been pushed up from beneath. It bears two names: Jan Palach and Jan Zajíc.
Key Facts
| Place | St Wenceslas Statue & the Jan Palach and Jan Zajíc Memorial |
|---|---|
| Address | Václavské náměstí, 110 00 Praha 1, Czechia |
| Geo Coordinates | 50.07980, 14.42970 |
| Part of Walk | Wenceslas Square to the Dancing House: Prague's Century of Revolutions, 1918–1989 |
| Generated | Generated |
Look down first. Set into the pavement below the museum steps is a bronze cross, and the ground around it seems to swell and buckle, as if the stones themselves had been pushed up from beneath. It bears two names: Jan Palach and Jan Zajíc.
On 16 January 1969, five months into the Soviet occupation, Jan Palach, a twenty-year-old student of the Faculty of Arts, set himself on fire near this spot. He was not protesting the tanks alone. He was protesting the resignation creeping through the country, the way people were already learning to look away. He died three days later. His funeral became a silent march of tens of thousands. On 25 February, an eighteen-year-old student, Jan Zajíc, did the same in a passage on this square. Both are remembered here, side by side.
Now raise your eyes to the bronze rider. This is Saint Wenceslas, the tenth-century duke of Bohemia, by the sculptor Josef Václav Myslbek, who worked on it for some three decades. Around him stand four other Czech patron saints, and on the pedestal is a prayer asking him not to let us perish, nor those who come after. Myslbek made the duke calm, not triumphant... a guardian, not a conqueror.
That is why this horse's tail is Prague's meeting point, the place where you say, under the horse, and everybody knows. Crowds gathered here in October 1918 when independence was proclaimed. And in January 1989, on the twentieth anniversary of Palach's death, people came to lay flowers and were dispersed with water cannon and batons. Václav Havel was arrested that week and sentenced to nine months in prison. Within the year, he would be president.
Keep that image of the calm duke in your mind... you will need it soon. Now walk down the left-hand side of the square, the side of the even numbers, to number 36, and look up for a modest balcony on its upper floor.