PRAGUE CASTLE around the year 830

PRAGUE CASTLE around the year 830

Reconstruction for the time around the year 830, period of the reign of Prague pagan princes. (On the basis of the oldest written accounts and archaeological research.)

The latest archaeological findings prove the existence of Prague Castle a hundred years earlier than it had been presumed up till then. In a view from the northwest through the Deer Moat, we can see a ridge of an elongated promontory falling on the east (left) down to the Vltava River valley and on it, a recently fenced in settlement. It was separated from the surrounding terrain by a deep chasm (right) serving as a moat which significantly impeded the access, possible only by a bridge. An extremely favourable location, inaccessibility, a large area, a source of water apparently predestined the place as an assembly field, documented by the chronicler Kosmas († 1126). It seems that the place where the tribe of Czechs decided on the most important matters and where a new prince of the Přemyslid dynasty used to be established was this assembly field. In the reconstruction in the middle, there is a princely stone throne documented by writings, a sanctuary, dwellings of pre-Christian princes, a sacred burial mound called Žiži (in a grove of hundreds of years old trees) and towers at the gate. In the background, there is the Prague Basin (meads at Vltava River, a rock over Vltava of Chvrasten – Vyšehrad) and on the right, slopes of Petřín.