I will be pleased to welcome you in this historical apartment situated in heart of Prague in Staroměstské náměstí. I hope it will be unforgetable time spent here.
Lesser Town Bridge Towers are two different style of unequal height towers, connected by the gate, forming the entrance from Charles Bridge to Lesser royal road to the start of the Bridge Street.
The lower of the two towers is also called Judith tower because it was part of the Judith Bridge, the predecessor of today's Charles Bridge. It was built of ashlar masonry in the Romanesque style in the second half of the twelfth century. In the thirteenth century there was a gate and a second, smaller north tower, replaced in connection with the construction of the new Charles Bridge today gothic buildings.
After in 1591 the tower was in Renaissance style: Renaissance gables replaced by battlements, facade decorated with sgraffito rectangles interesting symbol of Baphomet was a newly pierced the window.
At the end of the 19th century was discovered on the facade walled alcove with Romanesque monumental relief at that time hidden in the interior of the first floor of the adjacent former customs house. It represents a kneeling young man who takes or transmits something other, enthroned figure. The identity of the characters and the sense of the expression is unclear, but it is one of the best examples of Romanesque sculpture in Czech with French influences monumental sculptures.
Today it houses the association Club for Old Prague.
Around the second place of the original Romanesque bridge tower was built a new Gothic tower. Its foundations were built, hopefully Parler works at the beginning of the 15th century, but due to stormy Hussite period was approached to build up for George of Podebrady in 1464 The tower is clearly inspired by the Parler's Old Town Bridge Tower, but the lack of an intensive symbolism sculptures, niches for statues on the west and east side of the tower remained empty ever. Today's appearance of the tower dates from 1879 to 1883, when the restoration of its architect Josef many times.
Gothic Gate was built probably already Wenceslas IV. It consists of two pointed arches and was closed oak doors and iron bars. On the side of the bridge for the passage connecting the two crenellated towers, battlements characters with the imperial eagle, the Czech lion emblem and Upper Lausitz, beneath the characters of the Old Town and Lesser Town.
t:source: http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malostranská_mostecká_věž
