Changing of the Guard at the Castle

Changing of the Guard ceremony at the Czernin Palace is daily (yes, the guards are on duty for 24 hour shifts) and is a ceremony where they march from the Powder Tower to the Main Courtyard to swap places with the guards on duty (music too). We were told that the uniforms of Prague Castle Guards were created by Oscar-winning designer Theodor Pistek, who worked on the set of 1984's Amadeus.

Changing of the guards includes a grand ceremony at the Czernin Palace, which was built in 1660 by Humprecht Jan Czernin, the largest of the Baroque palaces of Prague, and now serves as the offices of the Czechoslovak. Old Royal Palace is the original residence building, mostly wooden, and was built at the turn of the 9th and 10th century on this location. It was prince Soběslav in the 12th century who had a stone Romanesque palace built right next to a new fortification wall. Romanesque-style buildings from the 10th century with Gothic modifications of the 14th century, the Old Royal Palace, was the seat of Bohemian princes since the 12th century. Back in the day, the palace's large hall was big enough for jousts, Until the late 1990s, this is where parliament gathered to elect the president. (SEE 3 VIDEOS).

We were told about the site’s “fame” as the world's most famous political defenestration When two regional governors for the Catholic Habsburgs clamped down on religious freedom in 1618, angry Czech Protestant nobles poured into their office and threw the two Catholic governors out the window. The two survived (many stories of how they were saved), but the incident kicked off the Thirty Years' War. This is where we get the term "defenestration," meaning tossing someone out of a window.

All Saints' Chapel, was built on the eastern side which in 1185. The Lobkowicz Palace is a part of the Prague Castle complex and is only privately owned building and museum. This palace was built in the second half of the 16th century by the Czech nobleman Jaroslav of Pernštejn.Read more