Modern Art in the Streets of Prague

As promised, these are some photos of nice modern art pieces you can find just walking around the streets of Prague. Most of the statues have been built by David Cerny, a famous radical czech sculptor.

The first statue I wanna show to you is "The Piss" by Cerny. It is two guys pissing on a pool with the shape of the Czech republic... and the guys are moving so with the piss they write famous sentences in literature... and if you send an sms to them, they will say whatever you wrote in the sms... It is located at the entrance of Kafka's museum.



The second one is the Monument to the Victims of Communism. It represents a human being being destroyed little by little.



For the third one, also by Cerny, I had to sneek into a back alley and check the back courtyard of the German embassy. It is suppossed to be a homage to victims of nazism.



And this is the only cubist lamp post in the world.



This one is Cerny's again and it is mocking the famous Wenceslas statue located in the nearby square. Wenceslas is here sitting on a dead horse upside-down...



And this is Franz Kafka's monument:



And finally, the "hang-out" statue. Imagine you are walking along narrow streets turning all the time and suddenly you look upwards and see this... I can tell you you would surely laugh. By the way, it is Cerny's again.



To all these, you can add the babies crawling up the TV tower I posted yesterday and the Dancing Building. Quite a lot of modern art stuff you can see for free in this nice city!

Prague (I) Geolocalized

I had some time this evening... and i decided to play around with Google maps and paint brush and show you how much I walked the first day I was in Prague...

This is it! I put the itinerary in two chunks so it is not tiny! The numbers in the pictures correspond to the photos in the previous post. Like that you can know where each place is.

Prague (...and II)

Let us continue with Prague!

The next day, I wanted to focus on the New and Old Town (Nove Mesto and Stare Mesto). The previous night, I had been partying with my dorm mates in Stare Mesto and it looked quite promising. We had passed by the main square and this is what it looked like at night.



In the morning, I decided to move to Wenceslas Square. This square is huge, but does not look too nice. The main attraction is Wencelas Statue at one end of the square, together with the museum behind it.



After that, I checked out one of Cerny's most famous statues (tomorrow i will show it to you) and went to see the City Hall, which turned out to be a beautiful Art Nouveau building.



From there, I followed an itinerary in which Kafka's life and places where he lived were indicated. That brought me to the main square I showed to you in the first photo. And to the astronomical clock! One of the main tourist sights in town. Every hour, the 12 apostles come out of the clock and the death rings a bell, and some trumpets are blown... it takes around 1 minutes for all this to happen and actually, it is not as cool as it may sound...



After that, I went to see some synagogues and the Jewish Cemetery. I could see the inside without paying from a back window in a nearby museum. Actually, the view was just fine and I could have a glimpse of it just for free!



After that, I felt really tired and came back for some rest at the hostel after lunch. In the afternoon, with the Bruneian guy in my bedroom, Nazim, I moved well into town to visit two other places. The first one, a modern church which was proposed to be UNESCO World Heritage in 2007. Finally, it was not approved. It is called "Church of the Most Sacred Heart of Our Lord" and looks like this:



Next to it, Zizkov Tower stood high in the sky, with some babies trying to go upwards along it! This was the n-th crazy sculpture I found in Prague. Quite a nice city for that!!



And back downtown to have dinner and sleep... I was taking a flight back to the Netherlands at 6.30 next morning!!

Prague (I)

Last week, I was describing my trips to Central/Eastern Europe when I had to leave to LA out of a sudden... Now it is time to come back to that topic! This time, after Vienna and Budapest, it is the turn for Prague, which is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever visited. This visit was two weekends ago.

I went just for the weekend and alone. I wanted to see as much of the city as possible and that meant I had to go at my own pace (meaning walking all the city like crazy, until I can't walk any more... hehe). As usual, people did not like my conditions and I decided to go alone. I booked a bed in a hostel downtown and there went I.

I arrived at night and went directly to bed. Next day, I woke up early and went directly to the most famous of Prague sights: Prague's Castle. On my way there, I crossed Charles bridge, the most beautiful bridge in town, with ornated statues on both sides of the walking way.



Once in the castle's neighbourhood, I passed by several churches and nice buildings (I do not want to bore you with one thousand photos... so I won't post any...). Finally, I got into the castle and there, the cathedral was the most interesting place. Have a look at the most gorgeous part of it:



After visiting the castle, I came back next to the river and followed a Lonely Planet walking tour to see the gardens in that part of the city. Like that I went into the Czech Parliament (amazing gardens...) and visited Kampa Island. A cool place I also passed by was Lenon's wall, where communist disidents drew and wrote antisystem murals and freedom cries. Nowadays, it looks just like a cool graffitti.



In the afternoon, I climbed the hill next to the castle. I thought the views would be amazing up there, but there were so many trees that it was impossible to see the city clearly. So, I visited a monastery up there and some night churches like this one:



and came back to the other side of the river.

I wanted to go to Vysehrad, which is Prague's second castle. To arrive there, I had to walk for around 50 minutes... shit, I was exhausted by the time I arrived there... :P

At least, I could sit back and chill out a bit once there! It was quite nice, but not as much as the real Prague's castle.



Before dusk, I came back to the hostel. Prague has a lot of modern art spread in its streets, here and there... Some day (maybe during the weekend) I will talk about modern art in Prague and Cavid Cerny's sculptures. For the moment, check this building out. It is called the Dancing Building and was next to my hostel.



I relaxed and tried to recover some energy lying in the hostel afterwards. I planned to go for dinner and sleep early so I could visit the rest of the city next day. However, I met some nice Indonesian (well, also a Mexican and a Bruneian) guys and girls and went for dinner and party with them! It was a great evening and we had a lot of fun! Perfect time to enjoy 12% Czech "pivo"... These are my Indonesian friends:



Meeting these guys was very nice and one of the good points of sleeping in a dorm!