Kutna Hora and the Jewels.....

So yesterday was a fun class trip to Kutna Hora, a medieval mining town about an hour from Prague. When it was founded, it sat upon the largest silver reserve in Europe, making it a very powerful town, the second most powerful town in Bohemia after Prague.

We started the trip off at the bone chapel, a church built on an old cemetary. To accomidate the building of the church, they dug up the bones, and used them as decoration for the church. It is a slightly creepy place.

Next we went to St. Barbara church, which was meant to challenge St. Vitus in Prague castle as the most majestic church in Bohemia (Kutna Hora was in constant competition with Prague as to who could be more elaborate and upper class). It is a very nice late-gothic cathedral, with many elements of archtecture that fall outside gothic style.

Finally, we got to crawl around hte silver mines. It is amusing to me, that girls on the program have yet to figure out that cute shoes should be left at home for the class trips, and were gonna wind up in dirty, cool places, so I got to hear some whining. But I loved the place. Copper mines in Houghton would be a lot more comfortable to work in, some shafts in the silver mines were accessible only to someone crawling on their stomach.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2046301&l=09805&id=6603926 for pics

This morning, I stood in line for 4.5 hours to view the Crown Jewels of Bohemia. There are some big rocks on that crown. Why the long line? The crown is only displayed publically for a week every fifth anniversery of the founding of the Czech Republic. Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Bohemia, who comissioned the crown, requested it only be shown publically occassionally, and once every five years is actually frequent compared to what it was shown before WWI. Also on display of note, was a reliquary cross used for the coronation of Czech kings, that held a piece of Jesus's loincloth.

Unfortunately, no pics were allowed, so you'll just have to come in the next week and stand in line and see it for yourself.