Prague’s Old Town Square may be famous for its grandeur and architectural
beauty, but it is, in fact, a shadow of its former self. A great chunk of
the Old Town Hall building was decimated by the Nazis at the end of the
war, and has never been rebuilt. To this day, a rather bare park stands
where most of the building once did. And across from the famous Jan Hus
sculpture used to be a towering Marian column, built in 1650 and felled in
1918, by Czechs who felt it symbolized the country’s Habsburg past.