The Story of Prague
—as in mediæval Italy—sometimes several palaces of one family from which the street took its name. We still meet with names such as the Thun Street and the Waldstein Street.
But of all these palaces the one that deserves fullest notice is the Royal castle on the Hradcany. According to the chronicler Cosmos, there was, in the eleventh century, already a castle (in Bohemian, ‘hrad’) on the spot where the present palace stands. This earliest building was soon destroyed, and that which succeeded it was burnt down in 1303.
When Charles IV. first arrived at Prague he found the Royal castle, as he himself noted, ‘deserted, ruined, almost levelled to the ground.’ He was indeed at first obliged to accept the hospitality of a citizen of the old town. Charles, who delighted in building, and particularly in adorning his favourite city, Prague, immediately decided to rebuild the castle. He is said to have resolved to imitate the Louvre Palace, as he had seen it in Paris. In consequence of the many civil wars, hardly any traces of Charles’s castle, of which the old writers have given a most striking description, can now be found. Charles strongly fortified his castle in the direction of the Malá Strana. The steep access to the Hradcany in that direction is a remnant of these fortifications. During the [[Portal:Hussite Wars}} the castle was used as a fortress, and it suffered greatly during those wars. The castle was greatly injured during the two sieges (1420 and 1421), when Sigismund’s troops were here besieged by the Praguers, but its fate was far worse after Sigismund’s troops had been forced to capitulate. The citizens rushed into the castle resolved to entirely demolish the stronghold of the hated King Sigismund. The town magistrates and the nobles, allied with the Praguers, succeeded indeed in averting the complete destruction of the{{left|142|3em]]
