Visiting Prague

Summary: salons, religious orders, architecture connected with the most important figures of the baroque Prague and its relations.

The magnificence of Prague Baroque architecture is specially marked by the military victory of the Habsburgs, re-Catholicization and the taste of the Jesuits but also the foreign noblemen building new town residences.
The triumph of the Spanish Habsburg imperial politics favoured the immigration of Catholics nobles but also the outstanding of the military leaders of the Bohemian Revolt who were not exactly Czech. The distinguish families come to Bohemia to shear the historical vicissitudes of the ancient Czech nobility.
Some Historians agree that the Baroque architecture arrived to Prague even before the White Mountain battle (1629) in the Italian style with French and Austrian flourished versions. An example of the Italian Baroque in Prague is the oval-shaped Church of the Holy Trinity (1611-13). Another example is the Gate of the Emperor Mathias (1614) though most of the tourists enter the Hradcany Castle nowadays.
The other wave of Baroque that took place in Prague changed many medieval squares and streets in a monumental way, being sustained mostly by the noble and rich man of the city. For example Albercht of Waldstein supported by the emperor wanted to build a palace in the Minor Town, a graceful loggia with many artistic features behind a forbidden facade that recalls a stern military barrack.
The Jesuits began to transform the old Clementinum into a large compound of churches, chapels, libraries, colleges, a theatre, an observatory, panting shops and a refectory. In the Minor Town and in the New Town they settled and built the St. Ignatitus church and other college. As a symbol of the international Baroque there was also constructed an imitation of the Santa Casa (the original being located in Loretto, Italy). The shrine is now surrounded by a cloister, a church of Nativity and many chapels. Latter in 1650’s and 60’s the noble families constructions resulted in a boom of town places next to Hradcany.
Among the architecture it is also distinguish in Prague hotels the literary work of the Baroque the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. In the fashion area the innovations were specially the gorguera, or the artfully folded white collar used since the sixtieth century, as well as the utilizing of the black capa.
The most famous salon was the Maria Manrique de Lara one, who married Varatislav of Pernstejn, a high canceller of the Bohemian kingdom in 1566. This was the most prominent salon of the time where the noblest men spend a lot of time.
Besides the Jesuits the Carmelite order to whom Ferdinand II welcomed to Prague and Vienna. The Lutheran clergy had been expelled form Prague therefore the Spanish newcomers got their old church the Holy Trinity in the Minor Town in 1624, one of the first Baroque church in Prague. After the Carmelites were settled they rededicated the edifice to St, Marry of the Victory and St. Anthony of Padua.
Polyxena of Lobkovic was one of the supporters of the Barefoot Carmelites because they lived an ascetic life of silence and solitude. Therefore she gave the Carmelites in 1628 a sculpture of the infant Jesus becoming one of the glories of the Catholic Prague. Polyxena of Lobkovic said that she “was giving to them what was most precious to her”. During the occupation of the minor Town by the Swedes the Carmelites made the aqua melissae a miraculous drink whish supported all their expenses, as well as the miracles performed by them. All of this helped the cult of the infant to spread to Catholic Austria and even Spanish America.
The Prague Baroque life took many different forms fashion, literal, mythic, architectural but religious most of all which is still possible to find its vestiges nowadays all over the city.

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