Stories · Prague
When was the Charles Bridge built?
Charles IV laid the first stone in 1357, and the bridge was finished in 1402. Its famous founding minute, 5:31 on 9 July, was worked out in 1979.
3 min read
The Charles Bridge was begun in 1357, when Charles IV, King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor, laid its first stone, and it was finished in 1402, about forty-five years later. The famous moment, 5:31 in the morning on 9 July 1357, is much younger than the bridge. A Czech astronomer, Zdeněk Horský, proposed it in 1979.
A bridge washed away
Prague had a stone bridge before this one, the Judith Bridge, finished in 1172. On 3 February 1342, a flood with breaking ice wrecked it. Charles made Prague his capital and wanted the river crossed again, by something grander and stronger. The new bridge was set higher than the old one, with fewer arches and deeper foundations.
A chronicler at his court, Beneš Krabice of Weitmile, wrote that in 1357 the emperor himself laid the foundation stone, on the riverbank near the monastery of St Clement. He gave the year and the place, but no day.
The magic minute
The day of 9 July first appears in a chronicle written about three hundred years later, by Prokop Lupáč, and there it's given as 1358. In 1979 Horský argued that Charles's astrologers had chosen a lucky moment, when the Sun and Saturn met in the sky, and he fixed it at 5:31 in the morning.
Write the year, day, month and time as numbers and you get 1-3-5-7-9-7-5-3-1, a palindrome of odd numbers rising and falling. It's a lovely idea, and the bridge's birthday is now celebrated at that minute. Historians point out problems: people then wrote dates in the Roman style, and clocks had no minute hands. The Czech history magazine Dějiny a současnost called the theory interesting but unsupported.
Eggs, builders and a name
Another legend says Charles ordered towns across the kingdom to send eggs, to strengthen the mortar, and that one town, Velvary, hard-boiled theirs for the journey. In 2008 chemists in Prague thought they had found egg in the mortar. Two years later the same institute announced that no eggs had been used.
The builder is usually said to be Peter Parler, the young master mason already running the works at St Vitus Cathedral, though some historians credit a Prague stonemason called Otto. The bridge is 516 metres long, about a third of a mile, on sixteen arches. For centuries it was Prague's only bridge. People called it simply the Stone Bridge or the Prague Bridge. The name Charles Bridge caught on only around 1870.
Where to stand
Stand in Křižovnické Square, by the statue of Charles IV, and face the Old Town Bridge Tower, the Gothic gate at the start of the bridge. Charles sits carved above the archway, wearing an emperor's crown, with his son Wenceslas IV on the other side. The chronicler's riverbank by St Clement's lies just behind you.
Hear it where it happened
The Trevlo tour Charles Bridge & Lesser Town tells this story at stop 1, the Old Town Bridge Tower. From there it crosses the bridge, past the crucifix where students held off the Swedes in 1648, the saint fished out of the river after the 1890 flood, and Saint John of Nepomuk. Then it goes down to Museum Kampa and the Lennon Wall, and ends at St Nicholas Church. Seven stops, about eighteen minutes of listening, at your own pace.
The first stop is free to play on this page, and your first tour in the app is free.
