Charles Bridge
in pixels

About Charles Bridge

Charles Bridge crosses the Vltava between the Old Town and the Lesser Town. It replaced the Judith Bridge, which a flood badly damaged in 1342. Building began in 1357 under Emperor Charles IV, traditionally on 9 July at 5:31 in the morning, and the work was led by Peter Parler, who also worked on St Vitus Cathedral. It was finished in 1402 and was simply the Stone Bridge, or Prague Bridge, until it took the emperor’s name in 1870.

The bridge is about 516 metres long and nearly ten metres wide, carried on sixteen arches of Bohemian sandstone. Until 1841 it was the only way across the river in Prague. A flood in September 1890 brought down three of its arches, and it reopened in 1892. Horse trams and later cars once crossed it, but it has been closed to traffic since its restoration of 1965 to 1978.

Thirty statues and statue groups line the parapets, most of them baroque saints put up between 1683 and 1714. The first was the bronze St John of Nepomuk of 1683, whose bronze reliefs many visitors touch for luck. Since 1965 the originals have gradually been replaced by copies, and many of them are kept in the Lapidarium of the National Museum. At the Old Town end stands the Gothic Old Town Bridge Tower, also attributed to Parler and finished by about 1380.

A few minutes’ walk east lies Old Town Square. Its town hall tower carries the Astronomical Clock, first installed in 1410 by the clockmaker Mikuláš of Kadaň and the astronomer Jan Šindel, where figures of the twelve apostles appear every hour while a skeleton rings a bell. Across the square rise the two 80-metre towers of the Gothic Týn Church. The whole historic centre has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1992.

The diorama

The diorama is a slice of the Old Town bank with the river cut open beside it, at roughly one unit to 1.6 metres. Charles Bridge is cut down to four and a half arches on piers with pointed cutwaters, with dark baroque statues on pedestals all along both parapets and iron lamps between them. It ends at the Old Town Bridge Tower, built with a gate passage, tracery panels, a band of coats of arms, a corbelled gallery and a steep slate roof with four corner turrets.

Behind the tower, a cobbled street leads to a corner of Old Town Square, lined with pastel baroque houses under red roofs. The Old Town Hall tower has the Astronomical Clock on its face: a blue and brown astrolabe whose zodiac ring and sun hand turn as a timelapse, a calendar dial below, and two windows where the apostles appear every few seconds while Death rings his bell. The twin spires of the Týn Church rise behind the houses. At night the towers and the bridge are floodlit and the lamps come on.

Things to spot

• A street musician on the bridge, with notes floating up from his guitar
• A painter at an easel among the statues
• The apostles appearing in the clock windows, with Death ringing his bell
• A river cruise boat sliding under the arches
• Swans and a rowing boat on the Vltava
• A crowd gathered under the clock

What we simplified

• Only the Old Town end of the bridge is shown, with four and a half of its sixteen arches; the Lesser Town towers and Kampa island are left out.
• Old Town Square is moved right next to the bridge, and the Týn Church, the town hall and the houses are simplified and packed closer together than in reality.
• There are fewer statues than the real thirty, and they are generic saints rather than copies of specific works.

Isometric maps of Prague

Prague also has 3 isometric pixel-art maps made by the community: the whole city drawn tile by tile in the same SimCity-like style. See the maps of Prague →