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Updated: July 23, 2025
On crossing the Charles Bridge from the Mala Strana to the Old Town we keep straight along the Karlova Ulice that is, as straight as you can along this narrow old street by which Charles must have made his way to the Carolinum.
There is a quaint old-world atmosphere that clings about the Mala Strana, in its narrow streets and under its red roofs and dormer windows, an atmosphere that suggests all sorts of good deeds done in a quiet sort of way, of simple piety and a general steady level of intellectual effort. In this, I am glad to report, some English people, or rather Britons, took part.
There, as in Vergil's Italy and in Browne's Devon, in Chaucer's dreamland, and in the realm of the Faery Queen, 'son forse dodici o quindici alberi di tanto strana ed eccessiva bellezza, che chiunque li vedesse, giudicherebbe che la maestra natura vi si fosse con sommo diletto studiata in formarli. The shepherds, who are assembled with their flocks, are about to seek their homes at the approach of night, when they meet Montano playing upon his pipe, and a musical contest ensues between him and Uranio.
Martin-in-the-Wall, very old how old I cannot tell you much mutilated and disfigured by restorers whose heads should have gone into the decorative scheme over the gateway of the Mala Strana bridge-tower; but here in this church the Sacrament was first given in both forms, sub utraque.
Let us return to our terrace, I to mine, you to yours if it gives you the right point of view, for we will now take the foreground into consideration, the Mala Strana and its "Crown of Glory," the Royal Castle, the Hradšany. We have watched Charles IV in his labours to beautify the capital of the land he loved, and among those labours was the restoration of the Hradšany.
All went very well, no doubt, for several years, when a calamity befell the city of Prague: the old bridge, built at her own expense by Queen Judith, the only link between Prague on the right bank and the Mala Strana, was damaged beyond repair by winter's floods.
Leopold was one of those fighting prelates who send others to do the dirty work; in this case an army of his, some thirty thousand bandits led by a foreign condottiere, invaded Bohemia, burning and pillaging until they came to Prague. Rudolph had probably invited them, as the imperial garrison of the Hradšany admitted these "Passauer" to the Mala Strana.
With all these drawbacks and imperfections, however, there are a few points on which he gives credible and curious information. He particularizes the silk of Strana, and of Schirevan; and adds, that from the last the raw silk is sent to Damascus, and there manufactured into the stuffs or damasks, for which it was already so celebrated.
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