Lapidárium: The Original Saints of Charles Bridge
Why is it significant?
Walk up to the long, low exhibition pavilion at the edge of the fairground. From outside it looks like a storage hall. Inside, it is a crowd of stone giants: saints, kings, angels and fountains, standing shoulder to shoulder as if waiting for a train.
Key Facts
| Place | Lapidárium: The Original Saints of Charles Bridge |
|---|---|
| Address | Výstaviště 422, 170 00 Praha 7, Czechia |
| Geo Coordinates | 50.10550, 14.43150 |
| Part of Walk | Letná & Holešovice: Prague's Hidden North Bank, from Stalin's Ghost to the Royal Game Park |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk up to the long, low exhibition pavilion at the edge of the fairground. From outside it looks like a storage hall. Inside, it is a crowd of stone giants: saints, kings, angels and fountains, standing shoulder to shoulder as if waiting for a train.
This is the Lapidárium of the National Museum, the collection of original stone sculpture from Bohemia, from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. Many of the statues you admire around Prague today are copies. The soft sandstone of the originals was being eaten away by weather and city air, so one by one they were taken down, replaced by replicas, and brought in here to rest.
The most famous refugees came from Charles Bridge. In September 1890 a terrible flood smashed into the bridge, broke two of its arches and swept two Baroque statues into the river, the Jesuit saints Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier. They were fished out of the Vltava in pieces, and what survived ended up here. Standing face to face with Brokoff's sculptures, close enough to see the chisel marks, is something you can never do on the crowded bridge.
Here too lie fragments of the Marian Column that once stood on Old Town Square. On 3 November 1918, days after independence, a crowd pulled it down as a symbol of Habsburg rule, and for a century there was only an empty spot in the paving. In 2020 a replica was raised again, after years of passionate argument. Nearby stands the Renaissance Krocín Fountain, which once supplied water to Old Town Square until it was removed in the nineteenth century.
It is one of the quietest museums in Prague, and one of the most moving: history without the crowds. From here, walk a few steps into the exhibition grounds, towards the iron and glass palace with the tall tower.