About us
Charles Bridge Museum
Want to know more about the medieval construction of Charles Bridge? Are you often struck by conflicting information about the repair? Are you a history lover? Visit the Charles Bridge Museum and enter the world of our ancestors.
History
Use the knowledge of our guides and let yourself be drawn into our and European past. In addition to professional tours in the museum, we are also preparing thematic articles devoted to Czech history and art history. The register is gradually growing. Our goal is to create a discussion platform on the website of the Charles Bridge Museum on a semi-professional and professional level. Don't be afraid to ask us anything at info@muzeumkarlovamostu.cz.
About our museum
Coronation processions and wars, festivities and floods, uniqueness and everyday life - all about Charles Bridge! In several halls of the original Křižovnický hospital and the church of St. Spirit (St. Francis) you will meet the history of a unique place and a unique building. Get to know the life of the bridge and the people around it!
The Museum of Charles Bridge in several halls of the original hospital of the Crusaders and the Church of St. František introduces visitors to many levels, especially bridge construction and everything related to it. With a clear emphasis on Charles Bridge, it maps the history of the connection between the two banks of Prague. You can see the stone building elements of the bridge architecture, the original craft tools, the reconstruction of period construction machinery (including a four-meter winch), the reconstruction of the foundation of the bridge pillar in a 1: 2 scale.
Illustrative models are an exceptional part of the exhibition. Here you will find a model of Prague around the year 1000 with marked fords across the Vltava, which at that time represented essential communication links. Along with them, the first wooden bridge, based on Slavic prototypes, which is mentioned in his chronicle, Kosmas also served the same purpose. The first model of the supposed appearance of Judith's bridge is also unique, created within one model together with Charles Bridge. The model thus shows the change in the axis of Charles Bridge compared to its more subtle predecessor.
The exhibition also presents statues from the Old Town Bridge Tower. These are castings from molds taken in the 19th century, still with preserved surface modeling, before it was fundamentally damaged by polluted air. A certain specialty is the bozzetto of Jan Nepomucký - the original sketch for the first real sculpture taken for the bridge at the end of the 17th century.
Many exhibits are truly unique. In addition to secular exhibits, the sacral peak of the exhibition is part of the altar of the 20th Grand Master of the Order of the Crusaders, Mikuláš Puchner from the 1980s, a work revealing the influence of Dutch painting, especially in precise physiognomic interpretation of persons, fine-grained expression of masses and materials Lunette paintings by the important Baroque painter Jan Jiří Heinsch will be exhibited. They illustrate the legend of the martyrdom of John of Nepomuk and were created nine years before the future saint was even blessed. The underground part of the church of the Crusader is also accessible within the museum. Its current Baroque appearance, the work of the French architect Jean Baptista Mathey (read Ján Batysta Matej) with a Baroque grotto from the end of the 17th century, hides the foundations of the original Gothic church, whose foundation stone was laid in 1252 by Anežka Přemyslovna herself, founder of the Order of the Red Star Crusaders.