Casemates & the Gorlice Hall: Statues in the Dark
Why is it significant?
Stand by the Brick Gate on the northern ramparts and look at the heavy walls. Inside them, invisible from here, runs a network of brick-vaulted corridors, the casemates, built for soldiers to move along the fortress under cover, out of reach of enemy cannon.
Key Facts
| Place | Casemates & the Gorlice Hall: Statues in the Dark |
|---|---|
| Address | V Pevnosti 159/5b, 128 00 Praha 2, Czechia |
| Geo Coordinates | 50.06520, 14.42120 |
| Part of Walk | Vyšehrad: Princess Libuše, Cubist Houses and the Nation's Cemetery in Prague |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand by the Brick Gate on the northern ramparts and look at the heavy walls. Inside them, invisible from here, runs a network of brick-vaulted corridors, the casemates, built for soldiers to move along the fortress under cover, out of reach of enemy cannon.
The passages are narrow, damp and long, lit only where the guided tours go. At their end they open into something you would never expect inside a hill: Gorlice, a huge vaulted hall, built as a shelter and gathering place for the garrison, big enough to hold whole companies of soldiers, with shafts in the vault letting in a little grey daylight from above.
And standing in that hall, in the half-light, are saints. These are original baroque statues from Charles Bridge, carved around 1700. Centuries of rain, frost and smoke were eating the soft sandstone, so they were taken down and replaced with copies, and some of the originals found shelter here. The ones crowds photograph on the bridge are mostly faithful replicas. The real ones are here, under the earth of Vyšehrad.
There is something strange about meeting them in the dark, after seeing them on the bridge against the sky. Up close you can see what the weather did: worn faces, broken fingers, folds of stone robes eaten away like old soap. They look less like monuments and more like very old people resting after a long life outdoors.
The casemates had other lives too. In the twentieth century parts of the hill were used as storage and as shelters, and walking these corridors you can easily imagine why. Back out in the light, turn towards the twin spires of the basilica, the ones you saw from the river at the start of the walk. Somewhere on the grass beside it lie three heavy pieces of stone, and the devil is supposed to have put them there.