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National Geographic : 1979 Apr
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OLD PRAGUE IN WINTER By PETER T. WHITE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SENIOR WRITER Photographs by NATHAN BENN I'LL NEVER FORGET the lady with the ten-foot pole. How at dusk she walked briskly with her dog on the cobblestones and periodically paused, lifted her pole which had a hook on it, and with a little pull turned on another gas lamp. Softly the glow would spread on her upraised face in the falling snow. "Iusedtobeanurse,nowIamapen sioner," she told me. "It is good to be useful. At six tomorrow morning we go out again to turn them off." She was playing her part on the gigantic stage set that is old Prague-the capital of Czechoslovakia in the heart of central Eu rope, said to be unforgettable to all who come here. Slender Gothic spires and splen didly squat baroque facades right and left; at center stage, a many-arched sandstone bridge across the Vltava River, with medi eval fortification towers at each end and between them a 1,700-foot-long gallery of sculptured saints, passionate andlargerthan life. On a hill above it all, the Castle.... As a Czech writer put it, Prague will pop back into your mind "with pictures taken not by a camera but by your own surprised and enchanted eyes." "But you should have come in spring." I heard this often-that this town is at its most sensuous when the chestnuts bloom white and pink amid exuberant greenery, when the gardens of many palaces are fragrant with lilacs. Yet it is also true, so my Czech acquain tances would agree, that old Prague exerts its fascination most profoundly in winter. I could sense why. Muted reds of roof tiles, the soft yellows of great vistas, the crooked lanes seeming to beckon and whisper-all bore a wintry touch of gray that deepened the mood of mystery, compelling reflection beyond what meets the eyes. "You feel something strong that won't let you go," said a painter. "You feel the great past, the history. . .. " Tourist brochures spelled it out in Czech and Russian, in German, French, and En glish. Over the past thousand years-from the beginnings of the history of the Czech tribes and of their kingdom of Bohemia to today's Czechoslovak Socialist Republic Prague has provided the setting for key epi sodes in some of the most fateful struggles in the Western world. Slavs versus Germans. Catholics versus Protestants. Communism versus capitalism. And relatively recently, within Communism itself .... Bride of tradition-in a city wedded to preserving its past-enters Prague's Old Town Hall for her civil ceremony. Despite a tortured history of religious wars, political strife, and German occupation during World War II, a historic core of three square miles of Gothic and baroque buildings survives as a focus of national pride and home to 75,000. 546
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