Prague, Dec 1 (CTK) – The second part of the City of Prague Museum’s exhibition on medieval Prague, which opens in the Old Town on Saturday, introduces the town’s appearance and the life of its inhabitants under the Luxembourg dynasty, focusing mainly on the reign of Charles IV, the organisers have said.
The exhibition, held in the House at the Golden Ring, presents the activities of Charles IV, the King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV (1316-1378), in Prague through a display of archive exhibits complemented with videomapping, demonstrating the construction development of the town in the 14th century.
The City of Prague Museum has maintained the medieval House at the Golden Ring since 2016. It was previously managed by the Prague City Gallery, but had a poor visitor rate, with only about 5,000-7,000 visitors annually between 2013-2015, the gallery’s spokeswoman Michaela Vrchotova told CTK.
The museum opened its Charles IV – A Grandiose Building Site in Europe exhibition last December and 30,000 people saw it before it ended on August 28. Its second part opens now and the museum gradually wants to fill all of the rooms in the house.
“We have entered the town to find its inhabitants. We wanted to show the medieval way of life. We came to a finished exhibition and completed it somehow, trying to fill the space and the gateways into the medieval organism,” Pavla Statnikova, the museum’s curator, told journalists on Friday.
“We are telling the visitors about fords, the predecessors of the Charles Bridge, but also about the local administration. The whole exhibition ends with a visualisation of Prague’s fortification, which was an essential part of a medieval town, as no such town could exist without it,” she said.
The exhibits, animation and visualisations reflect the ideas of the period and the fulfilled goals of Charles IV, especially the grandiose project of the construction of Prague’s New Town.
Visitors can also see a model of Prague’s medieval towns, Old and New Town, Lesser Town, Hradcany, and of the two royal castles: Prague Castle and Vysehrad.
Videopmapping is used to demonstrate the town’s constructional and urban development in the 14th century.
The exhibition’s second videomapping shows the space of today’s Karlovo namesti (Charles Square) in the 14th century.
The museum uses the medieval house of the Golden Ring to display its collections and archaeological finds for which it has scarce exhibition space.
It is situated close to Tynska street and it was formed by two medieval houses joined together. A part of its interior has been preserved, including some fragments of late Gothic wall paintings dating from the 15th century. The golden ring, a typical house sign, became part of its portal in the 19th century.
